


You Do Not Know

by rednightmare



Series: He Does Not [3]
Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Badass Dwarf Women, Basically Dís is the Best Dwarf in Erebor, Character Study, Comic Relief, Dwarf Culture & Customs, Dwarf Gender Concepts, Emotional Roller Coaster, Family Drama, Gen, Implied Bilbo Baggins/Thorin Oakenshield, Implied Relationships, M/M, Nephew Pranks, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-16
Updated: 2015-06-16
Packaged: 2018-04-04 16:42:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 27,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4145043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rednightmare/pseuds/rednightmare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He does not see the way the story ends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Do Not Know

You know he does not like it, what you call him.

It is not a Dwarfish thing. "Uncle," the both of you cry. _"Uncle. Uncle! Uncle Thorin. Thought I maybe saw an elf back there, Uncle Thorin. In the bog. Uncle. Make Fíli go check. When's supper, Uncle Thorin? Uncle Thorin, Kíli's up a tree again; better get him down, Uncle."_

That is what you sound like. Are you aware how irritating you are, then? – bleating it at his back, beckoning him somewhere, bidding he pay you his attention, and the Hounds of Mahal only know for what. So that is who your rightful lord is to you. Those two syllables, awkward on Dwarrow tongues, on your teeth, upsettingly Manish to the fine Khazâd ear. This is the name you have given him. Uncle – _un-cle_ – and it makes him cringe to this very day, a pupdog yap over his shoulder, chasing after the ram's wool and bear fur of his warcoat. It is a word that ill-fits Thorin II Durinson, Thorin Oakenshield, Thorin of Thráin, true King Under the Mountain. You would better call him something else. What that something else is, he does not know. But there must be a better name, surely. There must be a word that is more stalwart, more resounding, to describe what he is to you. There must be something more harmonious than these stubby, shorn-beard letters that knock together, paining his musical heart. In the proper terms, he is your mother-brother. But you laugh and twitter behind your hands like jays at this, and Thorin simply does not have the energy to scold you about using the old words – ancestors witness him, he does not – not when there are so many other troubles and worries and memories you cause him.

He does not like the way you hold yourselves.

You do not know how to move like princes. Your gaits are unbecoming and odd. Bluntly – because a Durin does not sweeten the truth, and he does not lie – you scamper. You sprint along the earth, loose and bounding, when you should stride. You should strive for glory. You should move with fierce, frightening intention when necessary, but you should never strut, or canter, or rush. All king-children learn this. When he was a boy, Thorin would be made to walk the great coldstone hallways of Erebor, balancing books on his head to measure the stature of his chin. He was coached how to speak the names of his one-hundred mothers and fathers before him; how to speak near and far; how to speak loudly without shouting and lowly without softness. He was taught that a king should walk like he feels, solemnity and truth; rule like he fights, clean and swift-to-the-throat; fight like he dances, a continuity of motion; and dance never, for it is one of those things a body looks inevitably silly doing. You? You walk like you dance and fight like you feel and Thorin does not know how you children will ever manage to rule.

You must be as more than you are.

You must inspire all the things a prince of a people should. You must move with long, certain paces, never dropping the shoulder or dipping the face. Do this, and others will be agape at your sureness. They will recognize the deliberation in your pauses; the unwillingness of your neck to bend; the regality in the length and heaviness of your hair, bones, and voice. Do not strut as Fíli and tomcats do, or lope like Kíli and hunting dogs with long, sloppy ears. Walk mightily, with pride and ownership, heel-to-toe. Hold your chin level, mind your hands, see the way men quake when you are able to warn action with pupil alone, turning your head just-so without moving your eyes. You must learn these things. He has hoped to impress them upon you through nearness, by having you observe him, but you are coltish and impossible, and seem not to want to change. It does not matter; these qualities are in your blood, sister-sons; they will manifest sometime; why not be mythic? Do not stand with pointed feet like the Elves or the ridiculous insole-pivot the Man lords do. Stand straight forward, strong stomach, grounded boots, with the weight of a mountain, immovable. Refuse to tilt your face up down for anyone. Flick your stare; be as stone; let them know that if they wish a Dwarf Prince to look upon them, they will lower or reach themselves for you.

Your gift is in being born the best of your people. Your job is to give those people something to cleave to. It is a Durin's responsibility – to epitomize the strength, beauty, and pride of the Dwarves. You do not think the Folk watch you, princes, but Thorin assures you: they do. You are the children who expect to rule. Give them something to look at and know is their king.

Fíli, Kíli – your mother-brother watches you eat rabbits, pick yarrow, run from honeybees, and thread corn flowers behind your ears – and he fears you do not know much about being a Durin, at all.

 _Uncle_. It sounds like something messy-tongued, foolish, sentimental, numb-throated. Buckle, canker. These are the like-sounding Manfolk words that come to mind.

When he first set out on this venture – when Thorin collected you from the house he built your mother long ago – he'd asked Dís, a warrior of some old regard, if she would journey with them. Your mother laughed and said No, Brother. No, Brother – her court plaits are sinewy and wearily-kept, beads of peridot and iron, hair as black as his. No, Brother – _or have we now enough Dwarrowdam to spill their milk and their moonblood on the insanity of males?_ No, Brother – even as he pledged to name her a Prince of Erebor again – even as he supposed to her they would find only skeletons, bloodstone, and sleeping, beautiful gold. She told him all this with the burn-and-crack of red coal in her sparse, angry voice, for a Dwarrow's second strength is in smiles when there should be sadness and fear.

"No, Prince," as she would call him to remind her family that all is not as it once was. Dís of Thráin of Thrór is the only female Durinson born to their thirteen generations of kingblood, and she recognizes the right of her womb. "I will not follow you for only the sake of hope in your heart, Makammathûn. I, too, hope. I hope you find an empty palace. My sons have from me good legs and strong souls, and they've the free will to ruin both for this wild walk of yours. But my life is with my people – moreso now, Thorin of Thráin, in the gasp of your mad hope, than it has ever been."

And she would not bid him a proper blessing, his tireless sister, standing on the flagstone stoop of her fire-hot house, no tear or rage in the hotter steel of her Durin eye. "Good-bye, sons of my body," Dís, daughter of Thráin, son of Thrór, shouted to her children as they left after the dark sweep of her brother with her axe and her bow on their lean backs. There is something flippant and something challenging in such an easy farewell. "I wish you warm fires and idleness, but if it is to be dragon, die gloriously!"

Dís would make a fine King Under the Mountain, Thorin thinks, if only she were not so stubborn.

He does not like the way you speak.

That is not to say the words themselves are poor – though Kíli could do with speech lessons, for you, youngest of Durinsons, do not know the difference between your thys and thines. No, what Thorin means to say is that there is a gravity missing from the very voices. Yours are middle-toned with accents more Manish than Khuzdul. They bounce everywhere. They bounce, as bells and baubles do, because you do not rein them in – your influx is unpredictable, hasty, too light. It clicks its heels or mumbles or shrieks or breaks into a changing, stuttering laugh. There is no control, no power. A prince's voice need not be low, as Thorin's is – he need not be gifted in song, as Thorin is – but it should, he thinks, measure with care its every hello, hurrah, and roar. It should understand its permanence – that this voice, and these words, will exist in time beyond you, for even the smallest thank-yous will be remembered by your smallest servants. It should be pronounced and unhurried, lingering, leaving some of itself in the thickness of air. It should define you. It should be felt in the muscle of the heart.

You speak like you are butterflies. You speak as quickly, fleetingly, as though your thoughts are fillies, unimportant, easily forgotten, trying to charge from your tongues and run.

And you have no manners at all.

It seems every time Thorin turns his head to look at Fíli, the prince's thumb is in his own mouth, being gnawed upon. The king will grab his arm and yank it out. But it finds its way back, mindlessly, making his first heir look like a child, chewing down his own hands.

" _Fí, look, look at me,"_ Kíli shouts on the high road, traipsing through the sycamores, kicking up dirt. His cry is garbled by a mouthful of wild berries he's found. Once the young prince has his elder brother's attention – once the thumb comes back out of Fíli's lips – the little one crunches, letting red juice coagulate and run down his face like clotting blood. He shows his teeth – bares the flats, snarls with the double sets of Dwarfish canines, the biters in front and the tearers behind them. And he lurches about with twigs in his hair. _"GRAK BLAK SNAK SMAK. ME ORC CHIEF. ME EAT YOUR BABY GUTS."_

" _That's disgusting,"_ whines Ori, who is walking too close, catching a spray of mashed fruit across his book of maps.

" _BLURK CHURK, MUNCH ITS LEGS,"_ Kíli slavers and, predictably, goes after him.

Thorin is too far ahead of them all to bother with it. He breathes out and presses the space between his eyes.

When your king was a child, barely more than a babe, he would have gotten the switch. They would have bloodied his fingers if this Dwarf Prince ate like you. In Erebor, a prince is expected not to make a mess unless he means to. He does not knock over things. He does not scarf. He does not slurp his tea or crunch his bread. A prince should ware his posture and mind his teeth and count to ten between swallows so that he does not appear too starved. You at your supper? Crumbs – everywhere. Crumbs and spills and noising. Thorin thinks you could make crumbs from soup.

These princes have no manners. Kíli eats like a peasant. Fíli bites his nails.

You do not even take care of your hair. When Thorin was a child much less your age, his father-mother, your foremother, taught him how a Durin ought to keep himself. One-hundred strokes with a silver comb (gold is too soft; iron leaves residue), to be done in the morning and at night; you must remove all of your rings before handling it, lest the metal catch and pull. When he was your age, Prince Thorin wore his much longer than you see him wear it now – four feet of black, enough hair to be truly heavy, hair nearly to the knees – but you cannot very well move around with hair getting about your knees. Perhaps when he retakes Erebor, he will do so again. But in the meantime, understanding the sacrifices travel demands, do you see your mother's brother neglect this? Does he fail to loose the knots; forget to pull the moonstones from his fingers; does he not tie it back when he sleeps? Do you see his look like yours? No, he answers for you. You will not. For a Dwarf who forgets this part of himself also forgets who he is.

Yours? It's dirty. It's stiff. Kíli seems to celebrate brambles and grass-stickers, lets his plaiting windblow to disaster – and this hurts Thorin the worst, for it is the dark mane of Durin on that carefree scalp. Fíli, your braids are competent, but they splinter at the ends. Is he going to present you before the Kingdoms of Dwarrow looking like hayseeds? Is he to settle the diadems upon your greasy, scraggled heads? The hobbits wouldn't let you sit at their tables for teacake. He knows; he has seen their children; they are cleaner than the two of you.

You do not know that Thorin thinks of you, sister-sons, when he divides and brushes his hair at night. He drags the comb and at each stroke thinks of all you are not yet – all that you will need to be – all that is still before him, in some far, deep dark before the dawn. He will stand face-to-the-hawthorns as the Thirteen swig mead 'round their fire at his back. He'll be warmed by the periphery of flame and company, holding the mess of black in a tail behind him, brushing and brushing, as though this will prove something, cement something, make him more certain.

Once Bilbo says from somewhere beyond his shoulder _I must say I have never seen someone so fussy about his hair!_ _Not even Lobelia – my cousin, Lobelia; Lobelia Sackville-Baggins – and she is a piece of work, believe you me – she's one stuffed, preening – well, she's just an absolute – bitch – but she's not half so particular about her—_ Thorin of Thráin turns his head without moving his eyes, and then the hobbit says Oh. _Oh Well What Do I Know About It Anyway Just One Wee Gentlehobbit From The Shire I Mean I Don't Even Know What I'm On About Really So I'll Be Off To My Pallet Then Won't I Pleasant Dreams Sleep Well And All That._ Thorin goes back to combing his hair.

Kíli tears tangles out with his fingers. And once Fíli – Mahal forgive him – shaved all the hair off his chest with a pear knife because it was "itching with fleas."

Ancestors, Old Mothers, Durins That Came Before: preserve him. Give Thorin Oakenshield strength.

You must know that your mother-brother approached your mother about this more than once, some years ago, when you were only a bit better than babes. _Your children_ , he would say – and snort, and scoff, and scowl mightily – _Your children, sister, look like they have the mange_ – because it hurt him, uniquely, to see that hair go to ruin on the backs of your happy heads.

"Let them be, Thorin," Dís laughed, leaning raw elbows on the fence of her herb garden – on the posts he had sunk there – holding a handful of tender-leafed stalks.

From where the king-in-exile stood beside her that springtime evening, watching you lost princes bounding in the wild clover with some homely human waifs, he thought it odd. Odd, how she loosely and lovingly cradled those lowly plants. Odd, the smells of rosemary, parsley, sage – so far from gold, honey-yams, and forge smoke, but not unpleasant, not in a way. Odd was the memory of his sister's hands before – before the tragedy – when they had not yet been bleached of their color, of their lines – before she had slammed a tunnel door behind them as they ran, and the skin of her palms welded to the bronze. Thorin could still see, in his sleep, or sometimes awake, the heartbroken, barren red that had been leftover when he'd torn them off by force. Next to her, in these hills, blue only in name, he could see clearly what was leftover now. The feather of her first war-braid, spreading like a horsetail from its pewter clasp; it wanted to be fixed, repaired, but no one would dare fix something of a Dwarrowdam's without being asked. She had commissioned it herself. He recalled that, too. So many springtimes ago, she'd picked out the humble, brutal, honest metal; she'd sketched the two black drakes an artisan engraved there, their snouts flared, tigerstone for eyes. So dark, that hair, and thick, as his was – as father's was – as father's-father's was. Dís kept hers tiredly. Rare tendrils in both of their manes had shrieked to early silver with stress and with grief.

"What does it matter now?" she would ask. "Let them be boys."

"They are Durins," grave, preening Thorin, who remembers the right of that name, had said.

She had not looked at him, but at her sons. And when she did, his sister's lashes went golden with sun, and kind with the wry, wise crinkles of a softening heart. "They are a mother's children. Let them be as any other mother's child might."

"Let me plait and set them."

"Let them be boys," Dís wanted. She rolled the shoots slowly, as though to savor them into the pores, pressed into the sand-white creases of her short, scalded, dragonburnt hands. "Let them run."

* * *

When Thorin thinks of his sister, he does not see her like this. He does not notice the loosening hair; the dimming eyes; the faint give of skin on a body where the muscle once suffered to bone, then swelled with babe, then went, contentedly, to fat. The King remembers her as a parting of smoke. He remembers her as she was in the last hours of Erebor – that cloudless, crisp, terrible day. He remembers her as she was when he was stumbling, drenched with smog and the evil vapor of hot gold, hurrying the ten Dwarrowdam he had found down a high hall, bellowing his family's names. He remembers the suddenness of her – appearing through the haze at a run, through the rush of tattooed shoulders and satin skirts and screaming lips and diamond-buckled shoes, clear and sharp as though the very lines of her had come alive. Her white gown smoldering among the rubble, mane free, bracelets scattering, stare afire. He circled out his arm to catch her, but she did not flee to him as he thought she was. The ivory bow in her hand, the quiver at her hip, no armor to speak of over her head or her heart. She pushed past him, knocking the arm aside as though it were but nothing. Thorin demanded she stop, grabbed for her, but his sister slipped through like a thread of spun silver. His fingers found only her necklace; it burst rubies, twinkling in the thick air between them, stars tossed across the wake of colorless lace. She moved against the current of other bodies, through the Folk as they coughed and scrambled, their mouths wailing the first, pattering licks of this despair. She had not looked for him at all. At the first gasp of open veranda light through those powerful Dwarven walls, while the red jewels spilled before her brother, she swerved on one heel – Dwarrowdam Prince, unmarried, unpromised, alone – out onto the rampart, arrow knocked, and as the blast of autumn sun gilt Durin's swart hair, the only red for her eye was the red of drake scale.

He pulled her inside and away. He pulled her with his arms under hers, a fist in her scalp, terror inside him, for she would not go freely. She spoke with her teeth and screamed at him with what Thorin will come to feel is the undying choler of Dwarves. And the wyrm in flight turned its great head and looked upon them – its black, eating eye – the dark color of Durin swallowed by molten gold – and its laughter was flame and death. It saw them there, _SMALL DWARROW, SMALL RULERS, TWO_. It saw them and it spoke unto them in the tongue of dragons. Thorin will never forget the sound of his name in a fire drake's mouth. You do not know this story, princes. But your king does, and he cannot forget the thunder of DURIN in a curl of smoke. He believes your mother would have stood at the lonely height of the Mountain and fired until she made that dragon bleed.

Immense courage, stupid bravery, worthy of song. When he thinks of his sister, Thorin will think of white hands, white fury, white teeth.

He will make her a Prince again anyway, Thorin decides for himself, even though she would not come on his quest. It will not earn him fast friends among contenders, but it will irritate the Ironfoots mightily, and perhaps, he thinks, that might make her smile like a daughter of the Mountain once more.

A mother's word is final, even among royals, and Dís decreed that you would run. But – though running boys you would be – this Lonely Prince used to chase after you, anyway. You came to know that very well as you grew in the upright shadow of his pride. He would move about those sometimes snowy, sometimes wood-green village outcroppings of the Blue Hills, sulking between the stockyards and market, where you'd flitter and squeal with laughter. He'd speak with the Folk, listen distractedly about the trading of Dwarven trinkets and the price of mutton, and he'd watch you from the corners of his eyes. When one of you would draw too close, oblivious to the hunter, then horror-of-horrors – Uncle Thorin would be upon you, a whorl of cape and fur, hucking a scrabbling Dwarfling under his arm. He would carry you – heels and knees, grousing like goblins – back to the yards, where the prince would plop you in a cold tin troth to scrub and soap and rake at your birdnests of hair until his fingertips went red and you wailed like little blond calves.

His sister did not seem to mind. You would go sniveling back to her doorstep, momentarily clean, locks sorted into the thick traditional braid that felt too tight at the backs of your heads, and she would only arch her brows. _"Makammathûn_ _got you again, I see. Be faster next time."_ Or your mother used it as a threat. _"Quick to your baths, little Dwarrow,"_ Dís would warn, _"or I will let Uncle Thorin plait your hair."_

Somedays Uncle Thorin still chases you, though you are a small bit harder to catch. Even now, when you are grown and should know better. Even now, grabbing for your scalp by a campfire; wrestling your roots into reach; appearing behind your dinner chairs with fine-toothed combs. It is not very different. You whine and squirm and complain theatrically, tender-headed, untough, asking snidely, _"Am I beautiful yet, Uncle Thorin? Am I Mountain-Made?"_

No, he will say. No, not yet. You are not yet.

Your mother-brother has tried to instill good habits in you, princes, but some days, he thinks all you truly want to do is run.

* * *

When you were born – first Fíli, then Kíli behind him – Thorin shaped for himself the harp he now carries: antler, horse gut, and the simplest of clean, unbeautiful steel. It is a poor replacement for the one he was forced to leave behind. He made the harp not because he misses his strings, which he does, but so that you babe princes would not grow up without the songs of your people. He would sit you around him under the night and sing for you the stories of The First, of Khazad-dûm, of the Arkenstone,and how, in the glory days, those simpering kingdoms of Elves and Men would travel far to come before your grandfather and kneel. Dwarves are naturally musical. You had no patience for instruments, but he taught you what chords and words he knew, that you might keep and teach them for yourselves: _The Song of Wind_ , _Mazzahâna_ , _March of Many Pines_.

There was a time, when you were Dwarflings, where you would sing them with him. He would bring you in from the aspen woods, you grabbing at his arms as you walked, stomping the unstomped snowfall, stepping in the prints of his boots, and you'd sing over the crackling of dry twigs. He would have you stand beside him in that empty, yellow-stone, pitiable Blue Hall where few subjects would ever come to call – stand you one on each side, like tiny stewards, simply so that you would practice the idea of ruling one day – and you'd sing to pass the boredom. He would allow you to sit, finally, and tell you again the stories you are learning by heart – and you would struggle with the heaviness of your eyelids, heads bobbing, until you fell asleep against the inferior stone sides of his petty throne, melting from the glow of weak firepit, thinking this homely fort is a castle. And then Thorin would scoop you up, carry you to your mother's home – and if you tried to wake yourselves, he would hum you limp and snoring again. He sang the names of Durin for you so that – even as exiles, even as children – you might understand how important you are to the world.

Now it seems you prefer Bofur's drinking songs. In these, your mother-brother does not participate – a king's voice is not made for merriment – but he really does not so much mind them. This is not Dwarfsong, of course, though it has its place, he finds. He will learn this of many things – of different, non-Dwarrow things. He will learn that what is not Dwarven is not necessarily weak – that what is not kingly is not always low. Thorin will learn that these, too – these soft, light, nothing-stories in happy song – have their place.

Yet he swears to you all that if he must suffer through that washing song another night, it will be the end of all singing entirely.

Bofur will, inevitably, respond to this empty threat: _"PARDON, BUT I KNOW YOU HEARD THAT, LADS,"_ the toymaker calls with a hand cupped over that outrageous twirl of a moustache his face contends with. _"TAKE CARE. TAKE PARTICULAR-TYPE CARE WITH THE CUTLERY, COMPANY. SON OF THRÁIN DOESN'T WANT ANY SILLINESS ABOUT THE DISHES. NO FORKS. NO SPOONS. AND – GOES WITHOUT SAYING – YOU MIGHT BE ESPECIALLY CONCERNED WITH THE—"_

" _Oh, not this again,"_ Thorin pleads, a losing murmur, but it is too late, for they are already skipping and heel-clicking around him. But a king must understand that, in their simple joys, a good people have little concern for the moods of their courtly lords. He supposes this is so with princes, too.

Your throats are not built for _The Lion Door_ , _Blue of Stone_ , or _Lonely Throne Lament_. Your voices are too light for the histories, at any rate, for Dwarven history is deep and sad, its songs dark and mountainous, like stone and storms.

Yet Thorin will see you at times – times when you think he does not – gathering firewood, sharpening your knives, washing your ponies, underfoot with _The Song of Durin_ on your lips. You sing it poorly – too breathy, too high, too far into your nose. But you cannot know the peace it brings him to hear you sing it, anyway.

Prince Thorin once sang before the gathered courts of the Kingdom of Dwarves. Grandfather would boast and spoil him. Now he sings at barrows and burials. He sings over turned dirt and frost and dense, north earth. But it is his hope – for the king-in-exile has nothing if not pride, and song, and hope – that you will sing over his tomb in Erebor, princes, as he has sung at Thrór's, and Frerin's, and as he has sung in the cold of the night for Thráin.

You were too young to remember your father when he was taken. He was an inappropriate match for a Durin – should have never dared lay his meager courting gifts or promises or betrothal braids upon Dís, and for that jaunty ignorance, bore none of Thorin's love. A hog-farmer and an Heir of Erebor! An insult, an unsuitable consort, and this unsuitable consort soon found that his royal bride-brother refused to speak his name. Indeed not, as the King-in-Exile would not speak to him at all. For your birth-father, from your mother-brother, it was only down-the-snout bristling; it was threadbare acknowledgement; it was a sidelong, curled-lip _hrrrm_ of disgust.

But she would not relent, and so a hog-farmer the daughter of Thráin would have.

Thorin did not yell at his sister's chosen. (Such a humble voice and humble name, he thought, was unworthy of inclusion in a ruling family debate; it did not deserve a Durin's affection or anger.) He yelled at his sister. He strode into her kitchen with the graystone square floors he had laid, his heels loud and snowy, hers nonchalantly bare. He took a hot copper kettle out of her hands, set it on the table with the spindly flower pot, full now of winter willow and bearberry. And he yelled at her.

"Are you mad," he had said. "You disrespect our family with such a match," he had said. "What would it do to Thrór to know the daughter of his son casts that privilege away," he had said.

"You give the gift of a Durin's hand into a hand that feeds pigs," Thorin said, spitting it, incongruently, comically fierce when everything in here smelled like cooked lemon, dried caraway, and oil for her leather boots.

Dís expected it. It is difficult to catch his sister unawares, impossible to surprise her. She walked around her brother as he lectured in those lofty, uncompromising tones, sitting herself in a carved kitchen chair, gingerly maneuvering on small feet. She moved, even when they were young, like a warrior full of aches – measuring her stride, not for decorum's sake, but solely for herself – chin up, eyes sleepy and unimpressed, steps quiet, like a weary king. Her hands found purchase on the knees of her simple gown. Brown wool – brown as in cedar, or caramel, or roe deer. By this point, there was no heraldry for her; Dís had discarded the monarchical hues: the deep blue of Durin, black stripe of the unwedded, soldier silver, burgundy for her own name. These she did not want any longer. But she liked the color brown _. "It reminds me of mother,"_ she said, _"the smell of coffee"_ – of shining black beans from the south forests and comfort and luxury and a mother's soft worrisome looks – all things lost in Erebor. His mother's daughter looked at him from her modest table – placid, annoyed; blinking rarely, eyes like two chirps of new metal in a wreath of heavy dark hair; a noble nose, round face.

She did not say much. But, when it seemed he was finished, Dís stood from her place, her scowl sober and personal. His sister did not bother to meet his eyes but for a moment. In that moment, it was a scolding, something meant to end the conversation, to instill shame. "When it is your hand and heart to give, your word will matter, Thorin-Son-of- Thráin," she warned, pushing the chair under the table, sweeping a few loose, dry fronds from the vase into her horn-white palm. "But until then," so decrees Dís of Thráin of Thrór, "yours is a voice that has never mattered so little to me."

"Give me back my potatoes," she said.

Thorin did not know what else to do, so he picked up the pot he had taken, and returned it. She set it back in the soapstone and black tin stove. Peeled yams bobbed dumbly. Dís threw in a palmful of salt and gave the lukewarm water a swish with her finger.

"Are you staying for lunch? I hope you're not too important to eat hash," she announced, and he stepped out of her way as she reached up to her drying rack, pinching a bead of garlic from a rope. Thorin felt like he was losing the thread of his righteous anger; he fumbled for something imposing to say.

"I favored Dwalin for you. I told him as much." (You laugh at this, sister-sons, but you must understand that Dwalin made more pretense at appearances back then, and wore a bit more hair on his head. Though, your mother-brother admits, perhaps it is for the best that you not call him adâd after all. Dwalin is a fine, stout Dwarrow Lord whose honesty, axearm, and loyalty are unmatched, but he would not bear your joking so well as Thorin does. He has not the patience of his king.) "I had favored Dwalin years ago, and I've said it, even when you had all but been promised to the Ironfoots. I said Dwalin when you were all ablush over the thought of _betrothal to that little prat nephew of Dáin's._ "

"Isn't that sad for Dwalin," Dís supposed, blandly stirring her supper with a large wood spoon.

"This ubjath, he is a peasant," Thorin declared, needlessly, for surely there is no need to point out what the grim, insulted dent between the Dwarf Prince's eyes, like the snap of a stick to an ember, means. His hand cut the air longways with terse, impatient chops. "He is placeless; has no claim to you; he could not spare the gold for your marriage bands, much less a birthing house."

"Once we had all the gold in Erebor as ours, and in my heart, I had less." Dís of the dragonmark and war braids, wearing her betrothal knot nonchalantly, as though it were nothing but a trader's bauble; keeping her quiver dusty, but full; her axe leant, sleepy bronze and steel, against the frame of the door. Dís of the Lonely Fortress in this humble black ironwood house. Dís had more of Thráin in her than Thorin did, truly. She had Thráin's belligerence, his fearlessness to fight; she had his courage to insist upon what she believed was correct, damn the consequences; she had the way, when confronted, he would angrily jut his jaw forward and look deeply, unflinchingly, into your eye.

Dís is the fire of their father. Thorin was always more of Thrór.

"I do not ask that you accept him. I expect that you do not place yourself in my way." Thráin, alive in the end-all timbre of her threats and the finality of the Durin-stone stare. In this promise, she does not look away. "For I will not sneak around you, though I will go through you, if I must, for I can."

Thorin is not first of his father in heart. First, he is Thrór's, who adored and spoiled this firstborn son-of-his-son. He is grandfather's stateliness, his sense of propriety. And he is also the King Under the Mountain's low, assuring calm; his interest in smoothness of rule; his weakness for favorites. It is not worth fighting with her, he thinks, not even over this. It is not worth fighting, for truly, to this day, Thorin cannot imagine a world where he does not have his sister's counsel, and one in which she does not have at least one brother to love her left.

It is finished here. She turned her gaze, her jutted chin, away from the prince; poked at the bobbing potatoes; tapped her bare toes twice to the floor. "And I like my house," his sister said. "It is a good house. And it is mine. I imagine I'll birth in it just fine."

And he does not know what to say, truly, because Thorin has no cleverness for words or speeches – he has only the voice to give to others' songs.

The sorrows of the Dwarven people are in more than dragonfire and bolted doors. Yes, they have this loud, raging grief; they, too, have gray, quiet, private laments, a despair bred into the food of their bones. For it is the wordless plight of the Dwarrow that they have fallen far out of balance. They pray to their god for girl-babes. They suffer from an overabundance of sons.

It is such a silent thing. They have crossed the lines of their blood too many times, have the Dwarves – they have been left to wed too close to the roots of their trees. It is not spoken of, but it is seen. Coldborns; infants that come without lungs or without both globes of their eyes; children who scream without stopping under indefinite, indescribable pains. Dwalin, who sheds his last strand of hair; Frerin's noseblood; Kíli, who cannot grow his beard; if you so much as scratched cousin Náin, his skin would weep, fearfully thin, plush red, for an hour. Babies still and strangled. And you wonder, do you, why for your people it is always mourning songs?

Perhaps she'd more wisdom than she spoke of in this, his sister, your mother – for it is not unlike Dwarves to say less truth than they know.

"Let me have my farmer," she tuts, then, clucking her tongue to the back of her teeth, making the face that she does when Dís feels he is being ridiculous, and she'll let it upset her no longer. "I would not deny you one of yours."

The sound her brother makes is indignity with teeth. "I would not waste my bloodline on my foolish heart."

He does not expect it: Dís laughs. She laughs at this, or at him, and folds her arms over her belly, and it is the white of her teeth in a head that looks remarkably like his.

"No, Thorin of Thráin; there is no foolishness in _your_ heart; this much is clear," she said. "This much is true."

Much anxiety about the pairing of Dwarrow; less decorum than you will expect when it comes time to name your own wives. It is believed by the Folk there is some old, skin-deep, biological magic in it. It is some sense, unseen by males, that she-Dwarves have to pick fathers for their next generation. There is much posturing, gesturing, competition. There is much planning and plotting and arranging. But there is no real order, for even kings and princes do not dictate to the lowest Dwarrowdam whom she will choose for her children.

"You have your choice. I would know what it is," Thorin deserved, at least, "that makes you want this so."

His sister could not tell him. With her crossed arms, she shrugged, and with her lilting grin, the face around it went tender in a secret way. She leant back into the counter and she looked at once so like and unlike him. "Who knows," Dís said, and there was gladness in her chuff, the tease of almost-laughter. "He is a soft little goat. And he makes me smile."

Your father was unworthy to receive what your mother freely gave. He was no noble, and as such, he could not – no matter how many children he sired – attain the honored name of Durinbride. A peasant and a peasant's name had he. But he was not, the king has told you, disliked, or dishonest, or unfair, or unhealthy. Perhaps it is best you have little memory, to spare you the embarrassment and to protect you from the pain. For it was always clear to Thorin that he would be yours more than the hog-farmer ever was.

A Dwarf takes his name and his blood from the superior parent. Thorin knew before you were born that you would be his heirs – and as he knew you shared their Durin blood, he knew you would be brave, cunning, and beautiful; he knew that your claim to the throne would be justified. The Dwarrow believe that Mahal does not bless a soul to the Dwarven body until a babe is one or two years of age. So these souls were meant for you, princes. You were meant to belong to the ruling line, to the Durin sinew and Durin bones. You would have been the same no matter who your sire was. Yet Thorin would have rather you had a sire whose name might be recorded in the histories alongside your mother's, and your own.

And for you, Fíli – you, who cannot recall much, but must look in a mirror and see the color of your father's hair – he would have rather the hog-farmer lived.

Dwarflings learn when they are young the way a Dwarf must grieve. The Mountain bleeds from them a heavy price. Their way of life is earth and fire; it is easy to let disaster find you at a forge, a cavern, in the gulch of a mine, among the tempers of a people built to fight for what it is they value beyond measure, beyond sorrow. Gold and daughters and diamonds and pride – they grieve to be sure of what is right, what is fit to be made for forever in song. The Dwarrow are earth and fire and they live long if they are to live at all. Their woes are as pure and deep-veined as ore in the stone. Grief is as a part of them as their glory – somber and arrogant, honest and terrible, scattershot through their meat and marrow, silver and jewels in dark rock, carried up to the surface to shine. This is the heat in a Dwarven eye, truly; it is neither their anger nor is it their hate; it is the boldness of a race that mourns. They sing their elegies and they cry unashamedly, with the clout of their greatness, and the furor of their children that never were.

Your mother sang her last as they rode from the ash of Erebor. As the people wept, their youngest Prince made song for them, as best that she could, her lungs thick with the poison of burnt gold and the pain of her skinned hands and the grief of all. She sang until she had no voice, until she had broken her throat on it, and then slept, and when she woke, Dís of Thráin decreed this to be the last lament Durin's Folk would hear from her. She had no more Dwarfsong in her heart to give – for it is no balm, this, no easiness, but a feeling sound that demands strength from the red of your blood, from what is Dwarrow in your soul. It is a terrible honesty. He would not ask her to give more.

They lost their mother in Erebor. You, who have, if you have nothing else, your mother, must understand in your core what this means. They lost her – life and body, lost – molten in the collapse of excess, an overspillage of Dwarven heritage and gold. Eíra, first wife of Thráin, mother of Thorin, mother of Frerin, mother of Dís, had been a straight-faced, quiet, large-bodied, tender-souled, barely-thereness in the halls of Dwarrow politics. Thorin had grown apart from her in adolescence, monopolized and pampered by the Durins, by their glamour and grandiosity, an enormousness that distracted him from the simple comforts a mother can give. And no Durin, she. Claimed by them; protected, yes; and much honored for her fertility – three children! a daughter! can you imagine the envy in those halls, the wanting eyes. She was a Durinbride, high nobility, with every privilege it implies. But not a Durin – and not emblazoned by what that dynasty means.

Eíra would sometimes look fretfully at him in the Great Hall, where her eldest son stood gloating by his grandfather's side. She would be silent, concerned, hesitant to touch her boy's forehead or his hands – though he was, truthfully, still a boy – as though the bearer of the womb that bore this child now feared how he might remember her with a crown upon his head. And he grieved this mother once they settled in the Blue Hills with the duty of a firstborn. He had a portrait made and a stone shrine built in her honor. But in truth, her loss to him was not the same as it had been for Dís – for it ever seemed that Dís, bravest of them all, was doomed to weep the hardest for the Durin Line.

Thorin had long been closer to his nana – Ylva Durinbride, mother of Thráin, second and favorite wife of Thrór, silver-haired and magnificent and imperious and terrifying, all the things a Queen of Erebor ought to be. Grandmother, intelligent and patient, antagonistic when she must be, wearing polished turquoise only because she liked it best, stare black as the darkest stroke of night, whose glory in age could be rivaled by no fat youngling in her husband's eyes. Grandmother, who spared no love for her fellow Durinbrides, but lavished all on the Durins; whose pride was sure and vindictive enough to have been one by birth; whose sandaled feet he had once found Thrór kissing on his lap like a besotted newlywed, at a breakfast table, in public, scandalizing everyone, and her squealing about the bristle of his great gray beard. She would rest her wizened, ringed, elegant hand behind Thorin's head and call him "my cub" even after his mother had begun to call him "my prince." She laughed mightily in a thin voice, drank tea with cloves and milk, and was intimidated by no one. Oh, how he had crumbled when she died, nodding off on her reading couch with no warning, a thumb between two pages, no sickly goodbye. He'd been a young prince, a pampered adolescent, old enough that he could have done better, but young enough that none of the Dwarf Lords minded how he cried in council when the runner told them, felt faint, and had to be led by his cousin out of the room.

All of that, and a better Dwarf than Eíra, surely. Yet he missed keenly how his mother said his name. And he, Thorin – and she, Dís – knew young what it was to miss and to mourn what cannot be reclaimed.

Then it is a measure, what he is about to tell you. It is a measure of what is true – for while Dís, daughter of Thráin, son of Thrór, mourned their sorrows as a Dwarrow must, she screamed not half so hard in grief for her home as she did for that farmer of pigs.

No, Thorin did not speak to him, for he had nothing to say. But – for a husband of his sister, a father of her sons – the King did sing at the farmer's grave.

* * *

A Dwarf Prince is never to kneel.

This is something not taught to nobility – not required of any Dwarrow Lord or any Dwarrowdam. Dwarven lords are not expected to be obsequious in their respect, and Dwarven females, whatever their station or breeding, do not so lower themselves for any kingdom's male. There is no proper decorum for a royal to do this – or, if there is, he does not know it – for it is not for a Durin to learn. You, princes, will kneel to none, so long as you shall live.

" _Not even to you, Uncle?"_ Kíli would ask him – filial, wondering eyes, fawn brown, innocent expression, ever looking for the joke.

" _No,"_ he would say. _"You, who are my sister-sons, whose blood is the blood of my father – you bow never, and to none. You have no betters on this earth. For as family loves family, a Durin does not bow to a Durin. As you will not to me."_

There is no joke in this, dear ones. Snicker and smirk as you like. This is the simplicity of what you are.

But snicker you will. He does not like the way you must find humor in every pocket and page of your life – in every passion, every silence, every thing that might otherwise make your young hearts afraid. How many are the times you chuckle when you should rage. How many are they that you tickle and punch and make light of each other when it is so apparent that each other is all of the sureness that you have. How many are the times he has found Fíli with eyes half-masted, chin thrust up, as the First Prince of Erebor dramatically tossed a blanket 'round his shoulders, whipped his hair, and steamed: _"Woe be upon you, for it is I, Thorin the Second; also known as Thorin, King of the Lonely Throne; also known as Uncle, Bane of Frolic, Destroyer of Fun, and I come for your split-ends."_

"O Great Mountain King! Wrecker of Joy, Most Dwarfliest of Dwarves,"Kíli would twitter back, nose wrinkled, large, bunnyish teeth glinting into his knuckles. "Tell me of our people! Are we truly so terrible and powerful as to smother dragonfire? What must one know, Glorious King, to rule Durin's Folk?"

"A preposterous question, idiot child. All you must know is that we," Fíli declared, stomping a boot on a log, giving his mess of blond another whip to flourish it back where it was. "Are the best."

This sends the younger's face into his hands, snorting. He keeps up the play: _"_ The best! But Great King, what of the Elves of Mirkwood? I hear they are very beautiful."

"Squealing girl-men with flat hair and skinny legs. Envious of Dwarven beauty."

"And the humans of mighty Rohan, Land of the Horse Lords?"

"A molehill," Fíli brushed. _"_ Human lands are a speck on a rock under the long shadows of Dwarven might. Think they themselves so grand with their fluffy horses and their fluffy lords . But I –" _Whip_."Am the fluffliest of all."

Kíli hugs both knees to his chest and he laughs and he laughs and the little prince laughs.

Your mother-brother would like to blame this horsing on the folly of boyhood, but it is not so. Thorin knows it is not so, for the last occasion he found you at your cheeky little game was on a summer evening, after dinner, on the quest for Erebor, lounging out by the grazing ponies you were supposed to be keeping from trolls.

"Now fetch me my homely nephews, for they need delousing," Fíli boomed, grabbed a dogwood stick, and swung it – and it stopped against the armored front of Thorin Oakenshield.

The king stared with tensed eyelids, great focus, absolutely a ruler of Dwarves.

"Shall I just belt myself, or would you like to?" the Crown Prince asked, glumly, and proffered that sad, flowering branch, falling like any contrite Rohan Horse Lord to the ground.

Thorin belted him – not for the sass, but for the kneel.

Do you not know that you are older, sister-sons, than once you were? You are almost grown enough to be called adults. And so your mother-brother would be pleased to stop beating you, princes, whenever it suits you to stop behaving like giggling elven girls.

He has taught you how to fight, he reminds himself. You know how to fight, at least.

A Dwarf Prince must know this. It is the King's place to defend the Dwarrow Crown to his last, just as it is the duty of Dwarf Princes to protect the Dwarrowdames. Thrór and Thráin fought orcs for the sake of that crown, in fierce, unhesitant, willing danger – just as Dís, Frerin, and Thorin have risked themselves in dragonfire to see the females, the future of their kingdom, out of it. It is a part of leadership to not let your people be killed. In this, however, your mother-brother frets less than he does about the other parts. Fíli is naturally skilled with the cavalry axe, and Kíli has long since surpassed Thorin's ability with a bow. Beyond that, you know each other's minds, faults, and hearts. You know what the other is thinking, where he will be. You fight two-as-one. He looks at you and misses having a brother of his own. He misses that knowing, and that being-known.

You do not know what a responsibility you are, or what responsibility you have.

This is not something that should need be said between Durins, between those whose names and histories are prouder than the jackdaw smiles that dimple your faces. Stupid smiles when they should be mountain scowls. Thorin is angry this conversation must be had at all, but your elder prince will humor you –because you are fast, because you are young, and because your fresh flames of life burn, unknowingly, on fuel from the greatest misery of them all. You are – like Thorin of Thráin, brother of your mother; like your grandfather was, and his father before him – Princes Under the Mountain. You were born to be kings of a place you have never seen. You do not know what you have lost.

You do not know to grieve, so he grieves for you, princes, until your bloodright is your own again.

One day, when you retake Erebor, he will find his proper harp. Thorin has told you of this many times before. He will find it easily, he imagines, for it was made for him – and a Dwarf hears all things made for him, because Dwarven treasure sings, princes, low and fine, humming with the strokes of its maker. He will hear it: the body of poured, incorruptible white gold; its neck scaled with lapis; its strings made of hart belly, rolled in powdered silver, so that they would shine when he plays. He will sit in that stout, cavernous, wounded hall with his loyal Thirteen and the crown on his head of dark hair, and this Dwarf King will sing for you all. He will sing of home, of farewells, of bitter rain and winter cold, of great loss and white sear of hope. He will sing you a song that would break the heart of the world. And you will on that day remember yourselves, sister-sons. You will hear music roll through the great gut of the mountain, as Dwarfsong is meant to be heard, coloring the stones, and you will know your fathers' house. Your bones will remember what it is to be a Durin, and you will recall a home you had not known you knew.

But until then, when you are as you are now – small and ignorant and sunburnt in ways the Folk are not meant to be – you have the histories he has sung to you, and the war chants, and the hymnals, and the lullabies. Yes, those, too. Those, too, he meant especially for you to carry on your breath until you are princes home again.

" _Uncle,"_ you nettled him on the soft dirt road that turns them from the Shire to the rockier places Dwarves must go. Clover peeked at the hooves of the horses, fragile in the loose red earth. With the food in their bellies and the spill of these gentle plains, pushing back the quiet wet cedarwood they have left, it is difficult to stay awake; the morning sun warms the fur at his shoulders and the back of his hair. Fíli has drifted to sleep on his blue pony in the greening sun. Kíli was about him, a sloppy rider, only just beginning to look steady in the saddle – he is at Thorin's side, jingling clips, jostling arrows, the same child's look on his face, wakening the new sunspots there. "Uncle Thorin! Do you have any walking songs?"

"No," Thorin shushed, a bit too theatrically, a father's protest, a no-without-a-no.

The little prince is not convinced. He scoffs his disbelief, totters in his stirrups, spits out a strand of his bungled smallbraid. "Yes, you do."

"One," Thorin relents, "just one," and as the grass turns to field gold beneath them, the sun is warm through the break of these elms, and the King does not wholly starve the smallness of a smile. He sings slow and clear and on his own in the daylight:

 _Under cloud, beneath the stars_  
Over snow and winter's morn  
I turn at last to paths that lead home.

Kíli is tone-deaf; Fíli sings like close and gingerly, a child. But when you ask for a song, you will have it, so long as there is music in him to give.

Thorin II Oakenshield has no children – because he will not bring upon them the sorrow you have been made to carry, brothers two, not Under the Mountain, all on your own.

* * *

A Dwarf Prince is not to be injured.

You are not to let yourselves be killed, sister-sons, unless there is no other recourse; your responsibility, above all others, is to live for your throne. And so he does not like the way you bound through these tundras and woods with such sloppy regard for yourselves. You carry bruises thoughtlessly; you are made of the branch scrapes at your cheeks, the thistle under your feet, the brambles digging in your arms. You allow yourself to be littered with a dozen small, seeable hurts. Insulting to let yourself be so marked by anyone, Thorin thinks, for a Dwarf Prince is not to be harmed – not by enemy, not by wilderness, not by disease.

Thorin has long been a Dwarven Prince and he has not been so hurt – not by any sword, not by any cur, not by any careless step.

Thorin is a Dwarven Prince and he will not be laid low by any place or thing.

Thorin is a Dwarven King, and he has never been so marked, never been so hurt, as he is at the foot of that burning tree.

The blood of Thorin II is as close to Durin the Deathless as any Dwarven soul or Dwarven blood can be, and so much of it has never been spilled in his life. He has never been wounded so. He has never expected so much pain. It is more pain than can be overcome. It is so much pain he cannot move – there is a wetness; there is a seizing, drip-drop sear inside of his lung; and comes the whisper of air through it, like sand. The grass beneath him is agony; the push of fur into these tooth marks, ruin. It is too much pain to be as a king. And when he sees the shadow above him is the burglar's, he is crushed. Of all of them, the hobbit; and it is a cruelty; his mouth tastes of death and salt and panic; this air is smoldering evergreen. Thorin feels a cold, bittery rush into his chest, but he cannot breathe. He thinks _I am going to die here_ ; we are both going to die. But his arm is heavy. His sword is near at hand, but the pain is too great, his arm is too heavy. Thorin of Durin is too heavy – he will not move, and his greedy fingers will not, upon what they most need, close.

It is easy to face the black hordes for a king in his crown. Armies do so every age, in every nation. To die for this crown, for your king, is in the natural heart of men and mer. It is mythic. It is the truest story in a thousand lines of song.

But is it such an easy thing, Thorin thinks, when there is no crown – and there is no kingdom – and it is not, to tell true, your king.

It is a dog's teeth for a Dwarf Prince throat. The beast grinned with yellow-eyed hunger and hate. And Thorin – who was sure that Bilbo would run; Prince Thorin, who does not let low peoples mark him; Thorin of Thráin, who has only once before seen such immeasurable courage, such truly stupid, madheart bravery – saw the hobbit tighten on the blade and show teeth of his own.

And for a moment – with so much blood from his body, staining the leaves, salting the smell of burnt pine – he sees her, Dís, his sister, staring at the cerulean tear of sky, drawing an arrow against the fire of sun.

He hears the white warg's wet yelp as a feathered shaft hits its lip.

" _Baruk Khazâd,"_ Kíli screams, and the flare of Fíli's axe flies high. And then, for a time, the King knows nothing at all.

If a Dwarf Prince desires to bow, though there is no conceivable reason why a Dwarf Prince should, he is not to make a show of it. Do not double yourself at the waist and flourish like some ridiculous horse lord; do not curtsey the knees like a boot-licking elf. Restrain yourself – for how can such an outrageous gesture be true? Remain upright. Fold your fist, cross your arm over your heart, shut your eyes, and swear by it. For what the Dwarves do in tight measure, they endow great meaning. When a Dwarf Prince bows, he gives to you his hand, ready for war as you desire; he gives you the force of his conviction and the health of his heart. He gives, above all else, his eyes, without which he would not see beauty, or battle, or stone, or sky. This is the poetry of the Dwarrow. They have no need for grand genuflections, for their truth is in their bodies and music already. If you mean it – and you will, for you must – a blink is more a sign of your fealty than any of those other peoples' larger bows.

Do not do any of this, he tells you. For he cannot imagine a circumstance. He cannot image, Thorin – could not have imagined he would be so easily paralyzed by something so lowly as pain. He cannot imagine the weakness of his body in morning as it had been broken on dog teeth and rock. He cannot imagine pulling away from Dwalin and Gandalf's hands as they lifted him, his bones shaking; his brow distraught; his thoughts wildly confused with the hurt; his frame remembering how, after that great, terrible shock of his first deadly injury, to make the sinew work again. He cannot imagine stumbling forward, voice undone, joints buckling but needing badly to move, blood flowing a bright and livid red from his body and the sides of his mouth, choking him, coughing: _what where you doing._ The King would not have imagined he could be unsteadied, has never been so unsteadied, to find his knees on the Carrock and his arms round a grocer to rue before them all how wrong he has been.

For he will ever be able to imagine, then, his cut head in a white orc's fist, dangling from the dark Durin hair.

What he could not ere have imaged is how pain would make a Dwarf King see he can be small like Thorin has never seen before.

And so he does not know everything, this king. He could not have known it all.

You do not know, princes, how afraid your mother's brother was – fear he has not known since he first saw himself in the gold of the dragoneye.

* * *

You do not know much of anything, Thorin supposes, because you will not listen to anything he says.

The King has tried. Mahal's hammer, he has tried to educate you. When you were younglings – when you were standing in his Blue Hall or caught inside your mother's house by a blizzard – Thorin would place before you tomes of Durin history, what few were smuggled through the flame. They have lost their genealogy tapestries, their story mosaics, their statues and their crowned jewels – but, thanks to the bravery of scribes, some books were taken before the dragon took all else. He would lay them before you on Dís's dining table and tell you to study. You did not. Fíli scowled at the same page for an hour. Kíli banged his heels into the chair legs and looked at the illustrations. Of course you did not. For it would be too much to expect of a young Durinson in this day and this age to demand he read the deeds of his great fathers before him, to master the diplomacy and the stratagems of the Dwarrow, to be a warrior and a learnèd king.

"What're you up to, then?" Bofur will ask one day, thumping next to Bilbo at Beorn's dining bench, poking happily at the scatter of papers among breadcrusts and the honeywine.

"Book," the hobbit says. He brandishes the journal he keeps like it is a light, unworrisome thing. "It's my book – I'm writing it. About this quest. My adventure, such as it is. I've read them all; I should like to write one, too."

You can be counted on. "A book? Is it going to have us in it," Kíli wants to know, dipping under the overlarge table, resurfacing on Bilbo's other side. He upsets a small clay pot of bluebells and the bees are quick to right it. It is fairy tricks in this place – the bees at the dishes, the dogs at the stove. "Put me in your book, Boggins! Every story needs a Durinson," the small prince decides, choosing that moment to snatch a bun from a basket and stuff it in whole into his mouth. His cheeks chipmunk ridiculously; he keeps talking. Far away, at the head of the table, Thorin makes a grunt of discontentment. "Makes the adventure more – what's the word." Crumbs sticking to his face; a finger taps his lip; some fall. "—majestic."

Fíli, at his breakfast, is more circumspect. "I don't know that I much fancy the idea of being booked by a burglar. We Dwarves are a secretive people," he observes, rightly, and hands off his used grapefruit fork to a drone. "Who knows how a non-Dwarf might depict us to the unwashed masses?"

"Put me in there," Kíli urges. "I want to be depicted to the unwashed masses."

"And who says," says Bilbo, "I am going to write in any of you, by the way? Not every story means to be about Dwarves."

A bee fills his glass with goat's milk. It makes the King nervous. His elbows are unsettled, not wanting to smack something that means mostly to help, not wanting a stinger in the arm. It makes him wish for the road again, though it is rare to find a friendly place, for the Dwarves are not a friendly people, and they have lost most friendships they once had. Builders, warriors, musicians, merchants, but few are pleased to see them. Thorin acknowledges this. He recognizes the demands of his ancestors, and the cold feelings mightiness will often instill. Elves and Men like posturing and soft diplomacy; they dislike those who know who they are with great pride. And the Dwarrow have, if nothing else, their pride. They are a difficult people and not easy to understand. Now, that their unmatchable greatness is buried and beyond them, the races of this world look upon the homeless Dwarves, and hope they will soon leave. It has made them exiles, this. It has made their highborn sons and daughters into miners, laborers, farmers and fugitives where once they were nobles laden in gold. It has made Prince Thorin, heir of his grandfather, before whom once both elf and human lords would scramble in deference to bow, a King with no harbors. Is this, then, he thinks, the legacy of Thrór? Is this a storybook for hobbit children? – the greatest kingdom in this world lost their crown and found themselves cast off, unloved. Were they too hard in their supremacy, he thinks. Too grand, asks the King, feeling suddenly odd with the cake in his mouth, souring, throat tight, making it difficult to swallow. Too proud. It has made the bear-man's cottage with its working dogs and its fat bees the only place that will let a Durinson wait and heal.

"Better that you don't," Fíli agrees, smirking, incidentally, the Crown Prince who drinks everything in his cup. "Storybook. What would you even call it, wonders me? _'Erebor! A Journey!'_ What of: _'Walking with Dwarves!'_ Ha-hah! _'The Lonely Mountain: Way Up There and Right Back Down Again!'_ Whoever heard of such a cockeyed notion."

Bofur is more sympathetic. He smiles his childlike toymaker's smile and pats the burglar's sleeve. "It'll be a fine one, I'm sure. No doubts about that."

"Oh, no doubts at all," the Crown Prince adds, adding another spoonful of pear pudding to his plate. "I have every confidence in your writing panache – you know I do – that's my honest opinion. But a journey yarn's not cut-out for Dwarf heroes. Dwarves don't have little storybooks, Master Baggins. Dwarves have legends. Dwarves have myths. A Durin has no lowly place in some hobbit tale."

What storybook, Thorin thinks. He, who is more of Thrór than any of them – whose one wish is to regain that mantle and that seat – must now carry a doubt in his head. For stories are not complete unless they have something to teach. Will they not learn their own lesson, these Dwarrow Kings? Will it be a dragon's eye upon the throne again?

"Ah, forget Fíli. Uncle, tell Bilbo we need to be in that book. Dwarfish imperative! King's edict! Hear, hear – tell him, Uncle."

"Enough," Thorin scolds, tiredly, because his insides still hurt him and his bandages are new, and because after what has passed he is having trouble telling Bilbo to do anything anymore.

"Why can't I be in the burglar-book? Dwarf books, too. All the books. I want everyone to remember me!" Pride – it is the culture of the Dwarves, their strength and their weakness – and nothing is more dangerous, sister-sons. He has no words to tell you this yet, for the king does not understand it himself. Not wholly – not in a storybook way. Thorin ever feels this disdain for what is small – he feels this great, lofty, choking, blinding worthiness – and he thinks of treasure, of a crown on his hair, of gold beyond all. And then, he thinks of his blood on the Carrock, and the shadow that might have been cast by his cut-off head. "Kíli and Fíli – Princes and Adventurers. The most loveable of loveable rogues. Heroic characters. And who, I ask you, wouldn't want to read about that. That's unforgettable, it is. People will remember us forever!"

But Thorin, through no skill or greatness or wisdom of his own, still wears his head. He thinks of its weight – this impression of crown in his reflection, a flash in his eye at all times; this awareness of his own importance; this contempt and want and rightness of his; this great red-scaled Durin pride. Princes, your mother-brother would give you all that he knows. But if you take one thing from him and one thing only, let it not be that. Let it not be his dragon's pride.

"Enough," he says, again – shorter than he intends to be – sounding enough like Thrór and enough like pain to make you quiet yourselves.

And the Dwarves eat their breakfast in silence, save for the humming of bees and the unstopping skritch-scratching of pen.

You do not know: Thorin looks at you, and where he sees himself, sees pride.

And he now feels fear.

* * *

You do not realize how needed you are.

Thorin will tell you this whenever he thinks it will do two princes well to hear it. He does not mean to make you boast and preen by this, sister-sons; he means only to say what is true, and what is necessary. The future of a people rests upon you. Perhaps it does not look like much now – damaged stone, bolted doors, stench of dragon. But this Erebor is yours as much as it has ever been any Dwarrow's. You inherit, do you realize, the most glorious citadel of what was once the wealthiest kingdom upon this earth. Understand that responsibility and that right. He will tell you this privately, and he will tell you this publicly. He will tell you when you see it – finally – with bear-men and goblins and the white orc behind you, with a tooth-made hole only now sealing in his chest. He will tell you while you stand beside him on some lesser rocks, looking into your faces for a glimmer of that weight, looking out far, into the shadow of the Lonely Mountain – where perhaps, Thorin likes to think, a coal in a forge still burns. He will tell you, imaging the picture you all must make at the edge of this cliff, wishing _would that my sister were here_ , two generations of Dwarrow Princes with eyes turned to home. He will tell you that your stronghold was the greatest, your halls the tallest, your black throne the center of this earth.

"Greatest! Tallest! Most mightiest! _This soup spoon was the spoon of my father's fathers! Bask in its glorious truth!_ I mean really. The arrogance of Dwarves," Bilbo will tut, because by then he has earned the right to say what he will of them, and does so often.

Fíli and Kíli will squawk protest, but Thorin does not care. He has sat on a bench or lain on a cot in Beorn's for many days and many nights now, bleeding, considering these things, considering the measures of friendship, how many of them matter and how many things do not. He has considered making amends. He has considered giving something of himself, of the greatness of Dwarves (which is Thorin's to give if it is anyone's, and so question you not). He has considered giving the hobbit a title: Steward of the Treasury, for there is no Dwarf so honest as to not filch a single coin, and Bilbo Baggins is worthy of nothing if he is not worthy of trust. But after centuries of treasures and goldsong in their ears, Dwarf Lords have become accustomed to a certain amount of stealing from their brothers; they have learned not to love less for it. The more he thinks it, the more Thorin decides it will not be Treasurer for the halfling, after all.

"Mr. Boggins! We are not arrogant," Prince Kíli bawks at the king's left, loose braids jingling, head swiveling, losing the Mountain from the corner of his eye.

Prince Fíli at his right stiffly nods. "And we blush at the assertion."

"Positively blush, blush, blush," Kíli trills, covering his face like a maiden, swinging back and forth.

"You should know that Dwarves are very selfless creatures. Why," Fíli observes, and he, too, twists away for this nonsense, and Thorin realizes his moment of gravity has been lost. "We give and we give—"

"Extravagantly! Give you the shirts off our backs. Give you the oaths of our whole family line. Give you the very last biscuit."

"Alas, some might say we give too much."

Kíli – grimly, sincerely – nods. "It's our only flaw."

The king is about to put an end to it – standing there on his own now, facing the Mountain's dark stomach where he knows Erebor must be. But before Thorin can turn about, and before he can move his head without moving his eyes, they have forgotten him and his tellings, these sister-sons. What is he to do but see in you what is himself and not himself? The Durin hair, the family language, that deadly pride. How Fíli walks like an oversure little lion. The way Kíli seems to prance, flittering over the ground, aloft in gasps, like a blackbird just now learning to fly. There is a future for his people, but as much as it lies in that proud stone, it is here, Thorin thinks; it must first be here.

"And that, my dear Mr. Baggins," the First Heir confides, a false tale, slouching just enough to clap an arm around Bilbo's shoulders, about-face him, steer them all away. The king does not watch them go. He keeps his sight on the Lonely Mountain, where it will remain, he swears, until they are in its bulk again. "Is just why Mahal made the Dwarves to crave such riches. Not merely to hoard and moon over – though there is some of that, I admit – but to more excessively moon over others. What do you think about that?"

Baggins side-eyes both as best he can with one prince on either side. "I think you are both full of horse shit."

"We are hurt you would suspect such a thing, good hobbitsir, truly wounded," Fíli lies.

"Wounded! Staggering!" Kíli clutches at his chest and rattles himself with fake, sloppy sobs. "Mr. Boggins, my poor Dwarfish heart!"

"Perhaps," the firstborn says, "we should prove to him how much we like to give. Because we're givers, aren't we, Ki? Eternally."

"You know, Fi, we are."

"One might even say it's the Durin way," Fíli supposes, slinging a wink his brother, reaching around his back; and they are too far; it is too late to be stopped now.

Thorin Oakenshield is loath to be distracted. You are not ones to be distracted, either, he finds, once some mischief has wormed its way into your minds. The word is _focused_. You are focused – bizarrely, boyishly so, but what's true is true. The only way to properly deal with the two of you, when you sidle up one-on-each-side like this, is to do as Dwalin does. When Kíli lopes up, sunnily, to shout, _"Dwalin!"_ , Dwalin will invariably and immediately bark _no_.

And when Fíli needles, _"Hear us out, my good Dwarrow, hear us out,"_ Dwalin will boom it: NO.

" _But you haven't even got the best part—"_

" _RAAH_ ," Dwalin will roar at them, scattering the princes, making them run like lost pages in the wind.

But the hobbit does not have Dwalin's power of no. When Kíli, sunnily, smiles, offers his canteen, and asks: "Thirsty, Boggins?", he does not say it fast enough – it is only a baffled _what?_ and then Fíli's full flask of water splashing in his face from the other shoulder. And then, when he leaps back, sputtering, it is Kíli's upturned over his head.

And here Thorin turns around and yells – for the waste of water, and for making your Durin faces giggle like impish elfling fools.

"THIS IS GOING IN THE BOOK," Bilbo threatens, sopping, his shirt too wet to dry his face. (Perhaps the Court Archivist, Thorin thinks.) But you do not hear this, or you do not care, because the two of you are long gone. Having done your damage, had your fun, you turn a heel, and both you princes run.

You do not know what you have lost – yet you do not know, sister-sons, what you are about to gain.

This brother of your mother, this son of Thrór's son, does not worry himself with those stick-in-the-mud scholars and kitten councilors who will say _you may not_. When Thorin is King, he will do whatever he wishes, within reason, else what is the good of being a king? So know this: your king-in-exile may yet be a prince on paper, but when he retakes what is rightfully his, he will make lords of all who followed him, brave blade and willing heart. Their families will be nobles, and they will join the court of Thorin of Thráin of Thrór, regardless of what weight their names once did or did not bear. They will be the heads of Dwarven Houses – excepting the hobbit, of course, but if no title exists for a Royal Burglar, then he will make one up. They will wear silver and sapphire. They will have opals and sunstones and emeralds enough to dress each of their dear ones with the beauty of the deep earth. These Faithful, these brothers who have followed him, are to have statues made of them that will outlast any brass organ or jeweled harp or fine pleat of hair.

The Dwarrow are an obsessive, covetous people – but you will find, should you deserve it, that Thorin II is capable of great generosity and trust.

He does not expect knightly gestures from you, princes, to earn his favor, for as Durins have known for the centuries and Dwarves have made their truth: there is no finer fealty than blood.

And Thorin – of whom statues shall be built; this is certain– will one day soon sit upon the obsidian throne of his fathers' fathers, and in a ceremony worthy of the five-hundred drums and one-hundred pipers he will have for you, will declare his heirs before the kingdoms of the Dwarrow. These great halls will boom with the joy of ages then. You know, he has always preferred strings – for they make solitary music, full of mourning, yet also with great propensity for joy – but the Folk have percussion in their bones, and he would have his princes welcomed home by their people. Fire and horn and rock! Think you this to be exaggeration? Five-hundred Dwarven drums – bull skin, boar tusk – this is his promise to you. It is your birthright, but also a gift of his love, and you know that Thorin II does not love lightly. Drummers, diamonds, thunder. Let the sound carry. Let the bog elves hear the full force of the Kingdom of Dwarves as they sink in their beds in Mirkwood. Let them witness the felicity of Middle-Earth's proudest people once more joined under the might of the King Under the Mountain, and let the tree children remember whom it was they wronged. Let their Bog King know whose grandson sits upon the Lonely Throne and tremble lest the Dwarrow make war. Let the sound knock the plates from the walls of the little Men on their Lake as they watch the distant towers of Erebor roar alive again. Let his sister _No, Brother_. Let us see what you children – again beside your King in your Dwarven circlets and Dwarven rings, one on each side, a real castle, a real throne – will have to laugh about on that day.

Dare to call him "uncle" then.

But before you know your birthright and wear your silver crowns, there are many miles, many fires, and a very long way to go.

You do not know how to comport yourselves as princes should.

Thorin understands the way of brothers. You jest and pinch and laugh at each other because it is in the nature of brothers to be quarrelsome. Dwalin and Balin, different in age and temperament as is night from day, argue mightily. Dori, Nori, and Ori will have six opinions and none of them compatible; Óin and Glóin speak without speaking. Bofur and Bombur snicker and joke. Your king, too, recalls how Frerin would take fun at his elder brother's expense, and how he himself would bristle and yell. It is well and good, he supposes, for brothers to be this way amongst each other, but it is inappropriate for Dwarf Princes, and once Erebor is restored, not something you ought let your court see.

Nor should you be caught twittering about it, dishonoring yourselves by treating your family tree offhandedly. Brotherhood is a serious thing – as lasting and close as the last pulse of blood in your hearts. You should not say, as Kíli does, _"He's the heir; I'm the spare!"_ You should not, as does Fíli, parade your heirship about before those who may use it against you. For there is dishonest company in this world that might hope to gain from your trust, to step between you, to poison what binds the two of you above what any friendship might achieve. If your first loyalty is to each other, then there is no wrong he can see from that. But you must take care, princes, that your fellows are worthy of you, and that no rot festers, not even between brothers, not between cousins, nephews and sons.

Brotherhood is a powerful thing. All races feel this. You must use this knowledge of and this trust for one another to overcome whatever might stand itself in your long path. But you do not understand what you have in each other, elder and younger sons – nor do you appreciate how easily you might lose it. So you are not likely to honor your brotherhood. You are more likely to use it to terrorize everyone else.

"CHICKYSAYSWHAT," scream the princes at the Dwarrow warchief sworn to guard their lives.

And Dwalin has no time to roar his thunderous _no_ or finish his baffled _what_ before it is a huff of white henfeathers tossed upon his hairless head.

"He's hatched, he's hatched," howls Erebor's Crown Prince from the aspen they have scrambled to, grabbing for his brother's hand, hoisting him up, breathless from running away.

So this is the future of the Dwarven monarchy.

Thorin supposes he must live five hundred years.

"Nope," the hobbit learns to yap whenever he sees you with the Dwarfish teeth in your mouth all happy and bare. "Nope! One step closer, and – by your very own Mahal – I'll stab you. I will."

"But we are heirs!" Fíli gasps with the innocence on his face and the bag of feathers held tight behind his back.

Of course, Kíli, too: "Heirs, Boggins!"

"You would stab one of King Thorin's heirs?"

"The King, Boggins!"

Bilbo flicks up his nose and does his best job of looking at the princes down it. "He only needs one of you."

You have never seen such a scandalized look upon two children's faces.

The love between brothers has begun and ended wars, outlasted famines and plagues, even beaten the gold-curse of Dwarves. This is a priceless thing, truly. Listen to Thorin Oakenshield tell you this if you listen to nothing else he tells you at all – for he knows what it is to be a Dwarven Prince – to be a Crown Prince – and to have a spare under his wing. He knows the moment you are surest your brother will always be here – will never leave you be, will never stop speaking, will ever be as a part of this earth as you are – is the moment he will be gone from you. He will be a face in the gray smoke of memory. His will be a name you cannot let yourself say for the pain that it brings you, a song you are too weak to sing, a child you are too afraid to remember. You will see, then, that in the Lonely Mountain, there is nothing lonelier than to be an heir without a spare.

You must not let that pride and sureness take yours, Fíli of Dís. You must not take it for granted.

And Kíli – may you never be the only heir.

"Fix me some tea," the youngest price whines by the evening fire, looking downcast and pathetic where he stands behind Fíli, and nudges his elder brother's back with his boot.

"Fix you some tea!"

"With honey in it."

"Fix your own tea. I'm busy," he gestures, twiddling a skinning knife in his one hand and tossing the whetstone up with the other. It is nearly sundown. While the others make camp, Thorin speaks with the wizard, and you two are here – of course – jostling and bickering amongst yourselves. "Can you boil water or not?"

"Doesn't taste right when I do it. Will you, Fi? Please? Pretty-pretty please with a cherry on top and custard in the middle and chocolate icing?"

Kíli will pout with all the scraggly hair slouched over his eyes, sniveling about home, until Fíli relents with a great spitting sigh and sets off in search of some wild mint. Once they have found what is to be found, handfuls of lemongrass and sweetfern, crumbled blueberry leaves, a fork of spicy bark, the Crown Prince of Erebor will sit on his haunches over the embers and make tea. This is Dís's teaching – her affection for herbs and roots, shrubs and reeds. Your mother is easier to see in you than your king, Thorin thinks, and in this moment, he is glad for it. He is glad to sit between you, one on each side, leant up against a boulder around the remnants of fire, holding wood cups in your hands and thinking, in these darkening elm trees, of where else you might be.

The King says: "When we are home, I will show you to the royal suite. You may pick whichever rooms you like for your own. My old chambers, if you wish them. The furnishings will need to be replaced, but the fireplace is most likely intact. Perhaps you will find some of my things to have."

"I miss ma," Kíli says, slurping loudly, burning his mouth, because he cannot wait for the tea to cool.

Fíli groans, blowing on his cup, testing a tiny sip. "Get off it, Ki."

"Well, I do. You do, too. I just like to say it, is all." The young prince's eyes are the same honey-brown as the drink his brother made. "I just think that sometimes it ought to be said."

So they sit in silence there. Kíli sips gingerly with his smarted tongue and pines for the smell of parsley, rosemary, and sage. Fíli gulps and dreams of castles on hills. Thorin swallows quietly, not too rushed, not too thirsty, and thinks of hearths roaring against the winter-cold stone. And the tea in his hands is a faint, fragrant warmth, reminding a king that what means home to him is not the same for you.

When you sleep, it is Kíli's cheek pillowed on Thorin's leg; Fíli's head slumping grudgingly into Thorin's shoulder; Thorin's hands plucking and flicking the wildgrass from your hair, his princes, two.

It is true enough that the throne calls only for one. But the King needs both of you.

* * *

The song goes:

 _Many places I have been_  
Many sorrows I have seen  
But I don't regret  
Nor will I forget

It is not Dwarfsong. It belongs, in truth, to the Men of Dale – the only song of theirs Prince Thorin found worth carrying. He does not sing it often (for it is not Dwarfish and therefore cannot be truly deserving of his voice), but since that far-away morning on the road from fairer green, it is in his head, about him, not far from his throat or his mind. The king keeps these notes inside of himself. He does not perform them again. Instead, he pens the music, enlisting a sheet from Ori's sketchbook, writing it down rather than belting it out so as to keep it in some way.

"You may have that one," so he tells the writer, "for your book, since you cannot have the others." And that said, the king hands Bilbo his page.

It is not that hobbits have no music of their own to keep. But it is larkish and light, unsuitable for a story such as this one, and outsiders are not permitted to share the music of Dwarves. _"I'll make something up,"_ Bilbo declares when Balin tells him this, apologetically, but in no uncertain terms. _"I'll make it up, footnote it. It won't be Dwarfsong – not really – just something, you know. To fill in the blanks."_ They decide this is an acceptable solution, and so their burglar makes something up.

Halflings should be adept enough at this, Thorin supposes. Bilbo is not musical – by his own standards or the infinitely higher expectations of Dwarves – but he is a writer, and knows how to create. And this writer does not come entirely empty of notes. He carries little folk songs, pleasant enough to listen to, happy and jangling, but of no consequence – fit not for sorrow strings, but fiddle and flute. Dwarfsong is not a place for him, nor would he try to join them in their nightly harmonies, for Master Baggins is respectful. He knows that their music is not for happy peoples. It is the domain of the Dwarrow, this somber joining in melody, how they share beyond words what occupies their hearts.

One day, when they rest at the shores of Long Lake, tired after their escape from the ridiculous bog-elves and their simpering, scissorbilled whoreking, Thorin goes with _Ó_ in in search of herbs to ease Kíli's arrowshot pain. They look for the yellow bell flowers of cat's claw vines and for willow saplings. The others gather firewood and try to catch carp with their shirts. When the Dwarf King returns, his fists full of primrose and green scratchings under his nails, he finds them in idle. The Company of Thorin Oakenshield: Bofur, crossed-legged next to his young prince on the sun-warm rocks, trying to distract the poor, peaked boy with numbers games. Fíli, worrying himself sick until Dori makes him wash his face and sit down for a spell. Bombur, arms full of freshly-chopped lumber. Ori and Nori, detangling minnows from their makeshift nets; Bifur, stomping short the unappetizing shads that flop away. Glóin, prying open clamshells with a cheese knife. Dwalin, neck-high in the fast-moving creek as though to grab a salmon with his bare hands; Balin scolding him not to go so deep in strange waters.

"Bilbo; where is Bilbo," Thorin demands, unable to believe that they have really just lost track of their burglar again.

The King is about to be very annoyed, but as it happens, Master Baggins has only gone for higher ground to keep watch for orcs. Thorin finds him sitting on a stump, scribbling into his water-soaked book, Sting propped beside him, easy to reach. The burglar is mumbling – to music – singing, or he supposes what passes for singing among halflings – but hesitantly, critically, wincing at intervals, working through as though he is not sure of the melody or of words.

It is still insufferably merry and hobbitish, but:

 _O! misty eye of the Mountain below!_  
Keep careful watch of my brothers' souls  
And should the sky be filled with fire and smoke

"No, no. No. That's rubbish with the 'o' bit; they'd never say that," he mutters to himself, snorting, mallard quill scurrying, crossing and twice-crossing things out.

The song goes: _I hope that you remember me._

In Laketown, it is misty and cold. The boatman is nosy and rude. Kíli is feeling better, he says; Fíli is now ill from the rocking of the barge; and Thorin is more annoyed than he has been in many weeks. He is damp and hungry and smells of fish. He does not like the clothes the boatman gives him. Dwarves enjoy soft furs and loathe being less than dry; these are musty, and they itch. The boatman's house is wet and chilly woodplanks. Dwarves thrive on fire and stone. The boatman's lot eat thin, salty, crabmeat soup; Dwarves curry red meats and vegetables that grow under the ground. It is a bland and dreary place for a people who favor gemstones and gold. The boatman's children are doltish and they _stare_.

Thorin, son of Thráin, son of Thrór, has nothing against Men. He has no particular reason to like or dislike them, and so they are already better-off than elves in his eyes. You should understand that, princes, when he tells you: this dismal, miserly village is not his concern.

The little one keeps coming up and _standing_ beside him with her slack mouth and her dull eyes and Thorin is annoyed all over again.

"Are you really a dwarf king?" she asks him, hands clasped in front of her patchwork child's dress, cheeks plump and penniless, rocking to the toes of shabby clogs.

He drinks flavorless tea from a pewter mug and does not turn his head. "I am _the_ Dwarf King."

"I heard dwarves are very rich. Are you very rich? Will you give me a coin?"

"We will be rich when the Mountain is ours again."

"Do you want to see my dagger? It's just a stick-blade is what it is. Da says I oughn't to show it to anyone, but I guess it's all right, you being a king."

Thorin glances into the cramped, moldy pantry, where the boatman's eldest waif distractedly boils another kettle, and his own sister-sons recount – with great, exaggerated gusto – their escape from Mirkwood to the delight of the boatman's son. Kíli hoists up his pant leg to show the bloody bandages while Fíli play-acts an orc drawing its bow.

When Thráin was Crown Prince and Thorin was young, they fought mightily. They did not bicker or snipe or scold. Thorin, flaunting and arrogant; Thráin, just as arrogant, but full of the low-browed impertinence of more practical blood. Thráin would berate his first heir's insolence, his harsh and gloating tongue. Thorin would dismiss him with accusations of jealousy over Thrór's love. They fought, they fought, they fought.

Thorin grew tired of his father. He was weary of his booming voice, shouting; his incessant worrying; his tendency to poke, furrow his look, and nag. Thráin did not like the way Thorin sat. He did not like the way he preened. He did not like the height at which his firstborn held his chin or the way he tossed his hair or how he looked upon the court from the bottoms of his cobalt Durin eyes. But Thorin has never known a love like his father's – his father's fists, shoving him back from the Dread Gates, bellowing in that dour, broken voice that it would not be him, it will not take him, _this will not have my son_.

Thorin knows in his heart he is more of Thrór. But perhaps, he thinks – looking at you tee-hee and boast upon that boatman's rickety counter, looking at the bloody gauze on Kíli's leg and the nothingness in Fíli's hands – there is some of Father in him, after all.

"Know something? I'm a human girl and you're a grown dwarf man, but you have lots more hair than I do. My sis braids mine. When Da is working or out she does. But I like when Da does it more because sometimes Sigrid braids so tight it hurts my head. Do yours hurt your head?"

He looks for someone to take the bothersome thing away. The boatman, of course, is too busy scuttling about his attic for tools and tack to mind his irritating brood. None of Thorin's folk have noticed their king beset by this child. Not but Balin, that is – who sits on a ratty ottoman, lips crumpled, nose pink, shoulders shaking as he tries not to let his laughter out loud.

"Are you lucky? I heard dwarves bring luck. If I let you use my hairbrush, do you think it will make my head lucky?"

"We are not lucky. We are the Dwarves of Erebor and our luck is to suffer a glorious right."

"Oh," the bardling says.

Then:

"If you're a king," she wonders, crooking a finger, hanging it like a fishhook in one corner of her mouth. "Then where's your crown?"

Thorin II Oakenshield Durinson, of Thráin, of Thrór, Lord of Ered Luin, Prince of the Silver Fountains, King Under the Mountain, sits at Bard's table with his itching sleeves and his shellfish soup and he says _hrmmm_.

"Oi lassie," Bofur calls, thinking to help; he picks up a pot, twirls a spoon, and the toymaker bangs it. "You little ones like music, I bet, aye?"

And then it is _Blunt the Knives_ again.

It is a makeshift drum and stomping heels. It is _Ó_ in scraping two forks together, Dwalin waking with a curse in his commandeered rocking chair, Fíli swinging a mug and sloshing on Kíli's lap. It is Bofur leaping onto the table with a saucepan for a crown, and Bofur's hat finding its way upon the eldest waif (who forfeits her battle for sullenness and laughs now as Ori politely, successfully, asks her to dance a Mannish foxtrot). It is the boatman reluctantly laughing, clapping his hands ineptly to a beat. It is Thorin who hoods his head and leaves out the front door – for if he does not get a moment's peace, it will be hellfire and brimstone before they so much as knock at the dragon's door.

This place at night is ominous fog, swinging lamplight, and docks underfoot. Thorin dislikes the brine and the barnacles, the thumping of the boardwalk, the moon on dark water and the lap of it always beneath his feet (for Dwarves do not swim very well). It smells of cheap, rotted wood, like the kind his exiled Folk used to sell in Dunland. There are rustlings of crab cages and turtle doves roosting in tree needles. Wives cook softshells and bass fillets in inferior oils. He dares not venture but to the end of the boatman's alley, even under the cover of darkness, for his people and these are strangers; a cloak is a poor disguise. (And, though he has not precisely discussed this with anyone but Nori, they will need to acquire proper weapons before climbing the mountain tomorrow; he uses this word, "acquire," loosely.)

But perhaps he will discuss it now, because there is the burglar at the end of the back street: jaw slack, standing there, breath opaque, feet fixed near a splintery railing, with blue coat hiked up and pulled over his head, making for a funny sort of hood. He gazes with some quiet, private, whispering horror up and into the cold black maw of Erebor beyond.

"Oh no, not you," Bilbo says when he turns back at the creak of a board and sees Thorin.

"Come you out in the cold and the mist to seek counsel from the carvings of my ancestors?" he wonders, unseriously, unsure if a halfling can see well enough in the dark to identify the rock colossi that stand watch over their kingdom's great door. "Legend has them speak only to Durinsons, but I think they have never met a hobbit before."

"Don't be stupid. It's a—" The hobbit drops his makeshift cowl and points to Bard's window, straightening the crunched zaffre shoulders as they ought to be, fussing back together the buttons on his coat. "—blooming madhouse in there. I left out to get a little writing done, is all."

"It is dark," Thorin notes, unconvinced. "Halfling sight must be better than I had assumed."

Bilbo frowns. He refolds his rumpled collar, pushes a curt and disciplinarian breath out his nose, and hangs on to his own lapels. It makes him look like a builder puffing himself up for a grueling, necessary task. There are still wrinkles in the fabric where he had once bundled his head. "Thought I'd get a quick look in," the burglar admits, still scowling his Shireling best. "Size-up the thing. It's just – well." He breathes selfsame bracing in-out again. "There it is."

The King is not particularly impressed. "It is dark," he shushes again, not meaning the night around them all, but the ceiling and eyes of this stone that has long been the lost world. "Were the Folk at their home, it would roar flame and fire over the ramparts, so that," – a flair of drama those who know Thorin Oakenshield expect – "if you saw it 'cross the far thick fog of this Long Lake, you would look and know that before you are the Dwarves of the East."

"I suppose it would have to," Bilbo says, "what with the Dwarf sense of direction."

"And do your hobbit tales have much to say about the mouse who sassed the cat?"

The writer has about three dozen sharp replies to that, but settles in this creaking chill for crossed arms and a face that is not somehow as clever as it once was.

"You were too late," he says.

Then it is the narrow, not entirely trustful look from the king, and Bilbo sighs, a little impatiently, to meander down a road toward what he means.

"If you'd only come fifty years before. Then you'd have my mother. My mother," the hobbit swears, a warm, satisfying memory in the weariness and worry he wears, clucking his tongue, eyebrows lifting into a warning look. There is a happiness in telling. But there is a little sadness in it, too. He kicks a pebble into the water that startles the sleeping fish. "Now, _she'd_ be a burglar to steal your way past a dragon. Belladonna Took. There would have been a real king's hero for you. Didn't give a fig about being proper. She was one for storybooks. Me – I'm afraid I'm too much Baggins, is what it is. Under it all. Sword and armor and whatnot."

"Your mother."

"Do you think I'm joking? Well, then, King Under the Mountain, let me tell you in no uncertain terms: you've cocked it all up, is what you've done. You got yourselves the wrong hobbit. She would've been first in line into the Mountain," and it comes out as something wistful, with admiration, some sweetness in pain that is sorrow without lament. It is myth, this memory, personal, but at their gut, all true myths are. The storyteller props his folded arms across this shoddy railing and lays his chin upon them. "She would have walked right past your Smaug and spat in his eye if he did so much as look at her in a way she found a little fresh. And she wouldn't have put up with all that guff from you, either – not half as long as I did. She would have given you all a piece of her mind. She wouldn't have tip-toed about, this-and-thatting. Over a handkerchief. Some apple pies. She would have flung open the door for you."

"But Bilbo," Bilbo frets, quietly, smashing his cheek on his sleeve, and it is weight and worry again. "He's a Baggins, you see. Baggins to the last, as it turns out. Just a little fellow, after all."

"Fear you the Mountain?"

"Fear I the _dragon_ , Durinson."

"Pish," Thorin says in his wisdom, turning his face, half of a _no_. "All will be well. If the drake is even there, Master Burglar, it will be fat and stupid in its leisure. Did you not just steal thirteen Dwarves from one fat and stupid serpent-king?"

Bilbo snorts and thumps the beam. "To be fair," he interjects, picking himself back up with the irritation of the sorry jest. "I didn't exactly sign up for that chapter, either."

"One stone is easier a thing to burgle than a baker's dozen of Durin's Folk." In a confidant, the King confides. "We would not fit in your pocket."

"Do you really think you're funny?"

"Perhaps in your lunch pail."

Master Baggins, in his gloomy mood, does not enjoy any of this and gripes. He scowls and looks a little grayish under the eyes. "I preferred you being horrid and mad at me; do you think you can do that again, please and thank you."

"I have said it to you once already but will say it again if I must. All will be well. There shall be no wyrm to meet us. And if it comes to pass there is, then you, who have braved tooth and claw and wit and fire, have so bested all a dragon has to offer. Surely it is the red drake who should then fear you? Surely you do not think we are to be—"

"We are going to _die_ , Thorin," the burglar shouts at the king.

You should not shout at a Dwarven Prince, and a king, besides. The Dwarves are a people quick to take offense and fast to reach for their maces and blades. Furthermore, a king and a prince should not let some humble subject shout at him, but before Thorin can be offended, or feel taken aback by the way the hobbit whirls on him with anger clean on his road-thin face, Bilbo has soldiered up and done his best to look the King Under the Mountain in the eye.

"This – is – _daft_ ," he spits, swinging his arms, crossing an 'x' through the air that makes the steel war bead Bifur gave him after Mirkwood jangle on the end of an ugly braid. It is not made at all like it should be. But what is Thorin to say to this burglar, who has saved them once then once again, too pent to be a real warrior, and at the same time, too free with his words. "It is utterly – entirely – completely fucking _barmy_ to go in there, for you or me or anyone – I don't really care who does – but I do know, if that dragon is where you left it, Dwarves of the East," Bilbo Baggins avows, "it will kill us all, easily as – literally – breathing. No one we have met in all the seasons of the year, from Bree to Laketown and every place, I think, in-between, has thought this quest anything but a fatally stupid idea. How does one fight a dragon, I ask. They don't. They don't, and I'm to what? – go in there," he sneers, "cheeky as a lad, try not to trip over its tail? Why should the way be clear, Thorin of Thráin? – just because you believe it? Did the statue tell you so? Well, I'm not going. No, no! – I'm not. I'm not going to be a part of this madness. Because that's what it is; it's mad. It's entirely mad. I am starting to think you have lost your mind, Dwarf King. It's debatable if you've ever had it. What good is belief? Tell me that if you can. I don't want to die and yet I am quite sure that if this is not as you believe it is, we will all die, screaming."

The hobbit breathes out all at once with his lips tucked in and his arms corporal-stiff at his sides.

"Probably," he adds, self-conscious, coughing into his fist, all possible options covered.

What now does a king say when to be loyal means uncloaking your unwilling heart?

The King says:

"When we did convene in the Shire, those many months ago, Balin bid me apart from the others, said something most meek. Said he: 'We need not do this, King Thorin, this quest – for we have built a new home, within which the Dwarrow of Erebor might make new memories, take new names.' He said that some things lost are never to be found. He said, as you have, that belief is often not enough, nor honor, nor right, nor courage. And for all that, ever have I believed we will retake it. I thought that, if I believed enough for us all, then it would not matter what we have lost or how much we might yet lose. Foolish of me to value this so closely, perhaps – for if Balin fears, why not I? And I do. I have found that I do fear. I fear and I wonder with my brethren if we are, after all, too small to return to what we once were. Yet do you know this about bravery? Still I believe."

Thorin is not much for speeches, and Bilbo usually does not find much of what strikes him as good sense in Dwarven words. Yes, they are arrogant, these Dwarves. But do not conflate arrogance with pride, for the Dwarrow need not boast – they tell only truths – for they know, without fear, what they are.

You may not, but rest assured, this is what Thorin of Durin _knows_. Erebor is not the largest eye of Middle-Earth. It is not the whitest, or the tallest, or the most by all revered. Yet, if measured by the strength of one soldier or the color of gold, then Erebor is the greatest seat and kingdom of them all, for this is what Thorin II believes. He believes it with the whole of his heart, and so it will be true. One day, if not this day. If he is not King Under the Mountain as the sun rises into the morning before him, then he will be king tomorrow, and if not tomorrow, he knows it will eventually come to pass.

Durin's Folk will have their pride – because if they do not, then they have lost everything, must mourn every part of themselves.

The hobbit does not care to be reassured. He has nothing else to protest, and folds both arms tightly again, bunching excess fabric, denunciation still a simmering in the back of his throat. "It's too optimistic to believe the dragon into dragon bones, I suppose? I wish you all hadn't sung that sad old song. In Bag End," he chuffs. "Over my own fireplace. Nerve. If you hadn't, I might've never come with you – been sitting in my armchair right now, bad novel, fat cup of tea."

"You would have come," the king _tsks_ , believing this, too.

Bilbo is less half sure. His eyebrows hop and the burglar sniffs. "Best believe me some courage, then, O King Under the Mountain. And, while you're at it," he says, turning, then, back to his vigil, dismissing the unwanted company, pulling the coat back over his head. "Believe me some fire and wings."

Thorin does not laugh – for he is, to tell true, a little offended, after all – but with that soreness and with that certainty, drops his hand on the hobbit's shoulder, and bids it rest there for a while.

"You will let me know if our Great Ones say anything to you," the king tells, and, because this lake air is wet and the water deep, returns to his folk in the midst of their song. "For they have never spoken much to me."

He wonders: do you understand in your blood why the Dwarves must sing? This cannot be explained in words, not even between princes, for Dwarrow find themselves in their voices, in their sad old songs. These show them the color of their blood and the weight of their souls when they have forgotten them in the shadow of what seems like an end. They sing to remind each other that they are more than what they feel in the loneliness of themselves.

Bilbo Baggins is a Dwarf-Friend. He may hear Dwarf language, but he may not speak it; he may wear what is made by Dwarf hands, but may not make it; he may learn Dwarfsong, but may not sing. It comes that night in Laketown, when the boatman's meager fireplace quiets and glows, after Thorin returns and _The_ _Man in the Moon_ becomes _Unraru Gundabad_ , _Dammith Nadnul, The Longwalk Verse,_ when the mood is low and sober for what tomorrow brings, and even you princes are not laughter and light, the King sings Dwarven song. It is _The Uncrumbling Hall_ , _Mashaklâna, Dark of Earth._ It is the sad, old songs that are the Dwarrow's own. But that they carry what is ancient does not mean, Thorin thinks, that there can be no room at all for what is new. So it is that when Bilbo finds the boatman's door, he finds too a new piece of story, a not-yet-song, a blank filled-in, made-flesh – something, maybe, that will say to him what Dwarfsong does between the rest.

The song goes:

 _O, misty eye of the Mountain below_  
Keep careful watch of my brothers' souls  
And should the sky be filled with fire and smoke  
Keep watching over Durin's sons

_If this is to end in fire_

Thorin slows it down and sets it to harp, and he hopes Bilbo might be gracious enough to sing it with him (for his version is very much improved), but the burglar does not. He balks in the door and goes black-red to the tips of both ears and makes a sound like he swallowed his tongue. Oh well, Thorin thinks, and plays.

Dwarfsong is a remembering. Dwarfsong, like Dwarf-steel, is ironclad and there is little room to share it. They are people of legend and myth; they do not tarry in fantasy; they guard faithfully their music. Yet if Thorin does have something to say beyond saying to a burglar and a thief, he does it with this, and hopes what he says is: a story is changeable. Until told by a teller who gives it its shape, a story is endlessly open, a substance without form, liquid gold tipped from a pot, wealth that can be touched and shaped to make this vast possibility into what it needs to be. He means to say that if this journey, like all great journeys must be, is to be story, then Thorin of Durin does not wait for a writer to mold his image into shapes. He will shape it now. He will, for he can; for this is the power of those that seek to remember; and, his voice says unto the burglar, if what seems improbable is believed enough, it can be made real.

The song goes:

_And if we should die tonight  
Then we should all die together_

No, it will not be Treasurer. It will be King's Guard; Thorin has decided it. Captain of the House, Protector of the Royal Line – for though most Dwarves are greater warriors, larger and stouter of shoulders, none have a stouter heart, and no one has braved so much for a king in his most unkingly times.

Dwalin will not be particularly pleased – but, if it was Thorin's favor he wanted, Dwalin would not have clung weepily to treebark and watched the warg come for his king.

Bilbo will not sing with him. Indeed, Bilbo never mentions the song at all, and perhaps this is a slight. But Thorin chooses to believe it is because – when a chord is honest and a voice is right – then you will have that understanding, that blood-deep truth before words, before language, for which the Dwarves do keep their sad old songs.

* * *

You do not know how long this wealth has waited for you.

In the marbled halls of Erebor, the Dwarves are quick to cast their former shells aside, for they were always temporary, and never the truth. It is not five hours since the dragonheat settles in this place that their company breaks the seals on the Royal Armory doors. They strip their ragged jerkins and leather boots and find metals once more: breastplates, pauldrons, capes. Miners and bakers shall wear the surcoats of knights. Thorin will feel like his true self again – the armor and lion fur on his shoulders; the sapphires and silver in his hair; the lapis and diamonds on his fingers; the kohl beneath his eyes; and the crown of his grandfather, reassuringly heavy, glistening onyx, mithril, gold. In this brief breath of time, only a moment, Thorin will become himself.

For Fíli, the King Under the Mountain will make a gift of the plate he once wore as Crown Prince of this place: gilt Dwarf-steel, glittering scale, pearl and black fox. Kíli wears his mother's grayiron and bronzed velvet. He will never be prouder to look upon you, heirs of Durin. He will never touch his brow to each of yours and feel more sure that this is a place your family can rule again.

"Gaudy creatures," the burglar says, and worries his face, and shakes his head.

How can he tell you that you will never want for anything in this world again?

When these halls are polished, the beds are made, and the great chimneys billow with white smoke, Thorin II will, as tradition dictates, have a new mural made of his family, a record to replace those that were lost. He will not say this now, but the King knows exactly where he would like you both to stand, which colors you will fly, and what you should be wearing on your hands and heads. This is the kind of thing he thinks of those nights at the fireside, tuning his harp, smoothing Orcrist, brushing his hair. He would not like to surround himself with those old paintings, where Dís is a babe with a thick torque of gold and emeralds pulling down the helixes of her ears. He will have her face remade. He will have them make you princes a part of this place as though you had never been away.

He will try to give some beauty to the burglar, who, like no burglar you've heard of before, looks upon gold and gems to scoff oh-good-grief-no. _I see it. I see the diamonds – very nice – thank you – and thank you, Ori, Dori – that's enough, now._ _What am I to do with these,_ Bilbo wants to know, pushing back the amulets and geodes and bullion the merry Dwarves push upon him. Bombur finds him a courtier's robe that is only a little too big. "You'd better scurry away from me with that thing," Master Baggins scolds, waving off the satin and crystal, face trying to express how ridiculous he finds the whole thing. "How am I to burgle anything in thirty pounds of gold," he would like to know. _Ah, but the time for burglary has passed_ , decrees Balin. Though they will, these Folk – devoted and jealous, brave and selfish – find that it has not passed, not quite. Perhaps, if they had looked upon Bilbo's face as he watched the blackness rise from ruin Laketown – spoken, instead of throwing jewels and persuading him to join in their happiness – a king would have turned out a hobbit's pockets, and seen this coming to an end.

" _It burns,"_ he cried, hobbit hands on the ramparts when Durin's Folk could touch only gladness and gold. _"The town is burning on the water!"_

The Mountain Dwarves are not a mild people. They have not much sense of shame, these Dwarrow – they dote embarrassingly upon their friends, feel publicly, and nurse their grudges for hundreds of years. They are valorous and gloating and intemperate, easily heartbroken, susceptible to flattery, quick to believe the best and assume the worst. They will remember everything. They are an extreme people – and they do nothing, good or ill, kind or wicked, halfway.

"You are difficult to compensate, hobbit," Thorin will grumble, perplexed by a burglar who wants no treasure, feeling annoyed.

You think he would make a dark and sullen king, perhaps – a crown to match his voice? But this is not so. Thorin of Thráin is one to find peace in power. He has his grudges but no real wish for war when there is so much else to do. Rule-in-Exile has taught him; this once-prince knows his reign shall be one of rebuilding, of refinding the kingdom that was splintered, the Dwarrow once more declaring themselves. It will not be the foolishness that was before. A king should be terrible, but must also be just, and sure, and move with grace, and speak with calm.

They have fought and died and mourned enough. He will be a gentle king, Thorin thinks. He thinks he would not make them sing more threnodies when it might, at last, be joy.

"I look ridiculous," so will the halfling, who can complain about anything, complain.

Thorin is not offended. He waits as Bilbo struggles to pull the hauberk over himself so that it falls correctly. His comes as a suggestion: "You look as a warrior does."

"Yes, except –" And here he lets it go; the links are musical as they dance upon their own weight, tumbling, simple value, unable to know that there is nothing fiercer than what they are. "—I'm a writer."

 _Hrm_ , says King Under the Mountain. His brows ascend his forehead and he looks frankly down where the hobbit stands. "If you think a warrior does not keep stories, then you have not met many worthy of yours."

"That's fine but plainly I'm no warrior." He is still protesting, standing there before a Dwarf King while wearing Dwarven silvesteel, with a blueforge blade in a Dwarven sheath, a scar from orc iron on his collar, a Dwarf honor ring in his clumsy war braid a Dwarven battle-healer taught him how to tie, not understanding what he has been given, still not knowing who he is.

Thorin looks doubtfully at the sword in the belt he is currently holding in his hands. "Are you not. For I am sure Dori would have this blade if you lay no claim it."

Bilbo scrunches his nose and squints his eye and makes the rude face that he makes.

"Do not make that face," the king tuts.

The burglar does not. He looks down on himself with a bracing sigh and a tug at the stomach of the mithril coat. "Well, it's much too roomy," he here admits. Thorin hands him his shirt and watches the halfling fuss that back on, too – and it is here he is almost offended, gut reaction, to see unmatchable beauty of metal wrestled beneath some humble shade of homely blue. There is a better surcoat to be had in a Dwarven Armory, mere steps away, to be sure, of finer fabric and richer hue and better stitching, and yet it is the shabby banner of Laketown Bilbo wants to wear. "It's not going to do. I'll get tripped up in it. And fall – on my face, most likely – some warrior. I could – put out an eye. Right out. And I won't have that."

"When the Ironfoot master-smiths arrive, you may have it taken in to fit you. Until then, this will do, Master Baggins," Thorin grants him, an allowance beyond all other allowances to alter what is made by Dwarrow hands. And then it is only the belt he has to return, blade inside, balanced flat on his fingers, as a king would present a worthy weapon to any Dwarven warrior of his own.

Bilbo sighs as he buckles the thing in a worried way that does not like any of this much. But the burglar says, "Thank you, King Thorin," and bows.

Thorin stops him. The King catches his shoulder before it can bend, and he folds the arm that is attached to it across the hobbit's chest, dipping his own head to show how it ought to be done by a warrior, by one who is worth the boon he tries so carelessly to hide. Bilbo mimics, halfheartedly, like a person who does not know how to be where or who he is.

It is surprising to Thorin how many people do not know this about themselves. For if he did not know this – if he did not know his soul and what it might do – then, truly, he would know nothing at all.

And if he does not know, then what good is a king?

Wise, loyal, and true of heart; power but not brutality; might but not fury; grandiosity but not greed. This is the king Thorin has always imagined himself to be, given time, given all that has passed in exile, and all that is owed to the Dwarves. He would have liked to ever be that kind of king. But Thorin is only that king for days, for he is first his grandfather's, and it is Thrór in him. The crown sits too long. Beneath that crown and its beautiful weight, all this generosity, this planning, and these forward-hopes become suspicion and umbrage and unfortunate need.

 _Thorin_ is the Khuzdul word for thunder. And like thunder, Thorin II is a distant, enduring rumble – promising, proud, and doom-driven – with a hate that may, suddenly, burn the trees.

Remember this. You think you know what will become, princes, but so too thought Thorin of Thráin. He thought he would be greatness and strength. He thought to be a dragon-fighter, as the blood of Dáin I and Náin II that runs through him. He thought to be might and majesty to last an age, finer than history, larger than truth, worthy of song and of story. But it is not for him. Thorin II is best forgotten. Thorin of Durin is made small. He can be no other but himself.

But he would have liked to be that king.

Thorin II is the Voice of Durin and he says: war.

* * *

You do not know what it is to look into a dragon's eye and have it know you.

It is such a quiet thing. It is, at first, like a sickness that settles upon him – a fever beneath his neck, an ache in the moving parts of his body, a heat in the planes of his feet. It gives him a sharp edge. It begins to make Thorin look ill – to gouge dark circles beneath the eye black, turn to glass the whites, drink his cheeks to gray. He yells at Fíli for some trifling offense within the halls. He ignores Kíli's nervous smile. The rest of them, Thorin cannot even see. All of them who have followed with such loyalty and willing hearts – ordered to crawl upon their knees through riches, searching palms and hungry bellies, sleeping lightly, anxiously, lest they cross the King – and he cannot see. There is a mist upon his pupils, a fog upon the gold. He will pale, and you will worry for him, sister-sons, though as it is he cannot find your faces through this color in his head.

It is memory rippling. It is like a broken string.

" _I AM KING UNDER THE MOUNTAIN,"_ the dragon says unto him with his sister screaming in her courage and his whole self frozen fear.

A soft, quiet creeping is madness. It is not bells and hellfire, like the burning of a lake. It is a dripping root. Some seepage, some bitterness in the rain – it falls inverse a flower, a crumpling out, not wilting in. Thorin supposes it began in his eyes, in the red break of scale, the splattering of flowing gold, the smell of drake fire a second-time sear inside his lungs. But perhaps it was the fingers, too. He is a Dwarf and the Dwarves are a people who learn their crafts by touch. Perhaps it bloomed first in his fingers, in the mindless swipe of them along the corridor walls – the long, aimless drag of his nightly wandering, a ghost over the bier, a long handprint, plundering the dust – his mark a staggering road that seems swept away by storm.

" _Do not question me,"_ he is to thunder with friendly faces falling dark and an echoing of dragonfire in the deep caverns of his bones, _"for am I your King!"_

It was in his hands and you could not have known. It is in Thorin's hands that frame the crown upon his head as though its fearsome metals shall become horn and boil into his skull.

His hand that sees not what it asked for and slaps the gathered rubies out of Fíli's palms.

His hand with gilded knuckles brought hard enough against the rise of Kíli's brow.

His hands upon his strings, when the instrument he has so long loved is unearthed and polished and brought to him by Dwalin in his Great Hall. "What is this sulking," the King scoffs, for the hobbit does not enjoy his new role, cannot find the legs to stand with ready blade and watchful eye beside that throne as the King's-Guard must. It is boredom and soreness and nothing at all to see. Or perhaps it is that he cannot stand this place at all, made of mountain rock and mountain cold, where he has been told to be. He cannot stand in-place when the others, if called upon, dare not bare their thoughts to Thorin II, but look up, dumb-tongued, at the no-longer-burglar, a meek concern from some lower floor beneath him. They look at Bilbo like they are afraid for him, and for themselves. He does not see how Bilbo looks back. But when they leave, his captain is weak of knee again. The king's guard sits on the dark marble with his red cape beneath him and looks sadly at his feet.

"Sulking! I'm tired," he mutters.

"You are to protect me. It is your duty in this kingdom to guard the king. You cannot be found moping about."

Thorin stands to retrieve his harp, which is too large for the hobbit to carry, but he would not have an armed Dwarf move anywhere near this throne. And so the king must drag it himself. Bilbo does not help him. He cannot see the halfling's face go to rudeness beyond the Dwarven velvet on his back. "And when there's someone suspect in this kingdom I will but that was only Dwalin. Must I jump up scowling for Dwalin? Bow before the King! I don't think my scowling is going to impress Dwalin."

"And if they strike against me and you are sitting on your hands?"

"That's a notion. They are your friends."

The shivering of hartgut, a dysphoria of notes, the clinking up the stairs; he places it where it belongs. "Are they."

In his sickness, king does not know.

"Come," Thorin bids, tiring of it, thinking the hobbit's sulking to be failure in an innocent, pitiable way. "Stand in your place and I will play you a song."

But when he has the chords beneath his fingers, the echo of Dwarf-stone around his breath, nothing comes. It is empty throat and empty measure, and it is but a lava rumble threatening words inside his chest.

Thorin has his harp again. He sits in his black throne and cannot remember his songs.

It is like sickness, like sweat in the bedclothes and a thickness in his mind. Spots on his memory, sleepwalking, his body without the soul. He remembers that immense gladness of opening these doors like the sweetness on the cusp of a lime. That was not so long ago – could not have been – but is it his own memory? Thorin does not feel he was there, somehow. He wanders. He blinks and he is somewhere else.

It is the greatest sadness of the Dwarves. Skeletons in the sea of their treasure; babes dead in the womb; eyes in a floor of gold. His sister on the ramparts; a thousand scattered gemstones; Fili's fingers, unlaced; the blood-letting break of his gauntlet in the side of Kíli's face. His hands on the arms of the Lonely Throne and his hands at the burglar's throat.

He does not know what happened, sister-sons. He does not know why it is a dragon's curse to poison that which it most loves.

When Thorin thinks of Dís, it is often in this place, on that day.

More than once he finds himself standing here. He will be present, suddenly, confused, as though waking from a dreamless sleep, not sure how he came to be where he is. These ramparts are in ruin. They are rubbly edges, scars from drake talons, and the king will startle to be here all at once – but this is now, not then. It is not the last time he stood upon this balcony. When he breathes, it is not a sweltering lizard-heat in the powerful eastern sun; the night is black and air cold, and the snowchill is bracing in his lungs. It is not his sister's hair. In this sureness, Thorin will come back to himself. He comes back to the weight of Thrór's crown – now his – and to the plump orb of moon in this star-flung mountain sky, like a pearl in a shell, a Dwarven dress in the black spot of a dragoneye.

He is awake now. But when he is asleep, in body or mind, he can hear it, can the king. The Heart of the Mountain beats low like a bass drum under the sea. He knows it must be near him, and, indeed, there are moments spent half-himself upon this curtain wall where the sound of it seems to come from within. It feels like it is inside him, this stone. It feels as though he might sink his hands deep enough through the wide flat bone of his chest and pull blue crystal pulsing out.

Every thing that shines begins to look like it might be this.

But again and again: it is not.

"Oi," Bilbo says, when "excuse me" doesn't work, and yanks on the Dwarf King's lion coat.

Thorin jumps as he comes awake a second time, dragging his toes from the edge of that fog, like a heavy-eyed child being kept from sleep. He is at least a part himself. But there is a moment, on that rampart – as he recognizes where he is and who stand before him – when Thorin sees a shape in a hobbit hand and his blood spikes, his quills go sharp.

It is not the Arkenstone. Bilbo unfolds his fingers and withdraws his hand all there is upon the crumbling merlon is an apple, sitting next to a bowl, underneath a pewter plate.

The king cannot remember asking "what are you doing," but assumes he must've, for the King's-Guard answers: "Bringing you your supper, because for some odd reason, nobody else wanted to – can't imagine why. Of course, you weren't in your rooms, so I had to go looking everywhere for you, which means it's probably gone cold. As cold as Dwarf food gets, bloody spicy as it is. Anyway, that's yours, you eat that," he says, sounding authoritative, like he does not intend to move.

Thorin has tried to eat in this place, but all tastes of charcoal and blood in his mouth; it falls into nothing, a cinder of itself. He cannot bring himself to swallow the stew Bofur makes; coriander, masala, turmeric, it is burnt wood. He cannot chew the salted fish of Laketown; they are splinters. He cannot drink black Dwarven tea; charcoal in water. He tilts a splash of fine clove wine into his mouth and it is like tearing into raw beef. The pains of his stomach abate and, by the third day, sleepless and shifting, dark like a dirge in the halls, he begins to forget. He puts a coin in his mouth to test the gold between his teeth and it tastes of blood.

But Thorin will pick up the apple and turn it, anyway. He puts it in his teeth and takes a bite: ash.

"—to be king on no sleep at all." The hobbit is talking. "And if you collapse, I'll not carry you. I'll leave you right on the floor. King Under the Mountain. I will. Let your Ironfoot master-smiths see that – Son-of-Thráin-Son-of- Thrór, face-down in his own drool – coronate you right on the spot – I'll encourage it. If you won't—"

And in his waking dreams, there is dragon. He sees in the corner of his eye a flash of wing shadow beat against the weeping stone. He feels the choke of his sister's hair in his face. He stands on this open wall, under the opal moon, on this same blooded stone, and the King hears its voice – its Dwarf-fed tongue across Dwarf sounds. Thorin hears the dragon's growl of DURIN – DU RIN IMRID UNDU UBRAZ – a beating beneath his skin, through the meat, among the bones.

_KHAZUD AGRÂTH – DIE BENEATH YOUR GOLD._

The Lonely King closes his eyes to chase the shadow from him. He might like to rest, if he could, but Thorin finds he cannot – not with this drumming, this voice of storm inside him. The darkness is thick across his face, in the lids, in the fogginess of his mind, but sleep is not the King's. The royal eye cannot stay closed. Instead, he blinks long. He feels the solidness of bruised apple in hands; sees the hands upon it; and, upon them, the diamonds and moonstone and gold. And he says:

"How is your book, Master Hobbit."

"Oh. It's – fine. It's fine, thank you." Bilbo frowns with the unexpectedness of that. He throws his cape around himself like a scarf in this thin air, nose twitching displeasure – and he means to round back upon the conversation, but a writer is a writer and when asked this question a writer cannot seem to stop until he is through. "That is," the hobbit adds. "It needs a bit of editing. A little rewriting, I admit. Me being more than a little, dare I say, rushed – literally, rushing away from orcs and spiders and things. Needs to be cleaned up a bit. Verb tenses. Clichés. Needs a little polishing before anyone proper reads it. It's a piece of history, you know – it's no storybook, not really – and that changes quite a lot. It's about people. Real people," he swears, as though Thorin does not know this of himself, as though the world must be convinced to see it, as though they will not believe life without proof. "Living and breathing. I want to capture it well. I want it all to be – well – I want it to be remembered, all of it, as it was."

"One day," and the King's hand is heavy on the hobbit's hair, his face is tired and true, and his rings are metal and cold. "You will read it to me."

And so the book must wait to be read for a very long time indeed.

* * *

One day, Bilbo will bring his sister-son a cup of tea upon the linen couch, their eyes fusty and sleepless with new grief. He will tuck an extra blanket around the boy's feet, drag a chair to his side, settle down, and begin to speak. He will not read it from his book. He will say it aloud, from his memory, as though it were fresh and unwritten, a second version, something he has never said before: _once upon a time_.

The writer says:

"Once upon a time, there were two little princes who lived in a mighty kingdom of stone. They were brothers, these princes – nephews of a grand Dwarf King – and, long ago, they all ruled happily under a lonely mountain, family together, just like you and I."

Here a boy will sigh at what a writer says. It's in the nature of boys to do so. And that sigh is singular – it is a weak, inward, grumbling sound, flimsy protest, with greasy curls and bluish cheeks. It is that way beacuse surliness is easier than sadness, as is being strong to being so awfully, hurtably small. Frodo's voice is thin with petulance and the croak of crying too fitfully, too fast. "I'm too old for fairy stories, Uncle," he says.

"Bollocks you are," Bilbo snorts, making young Frodo gasp, clinking his own mug on the hardwood floor. "No one's too old for fairy stories. But this, lad, is no mere story – it's the truth – and I'd know, because I was there."

The boy is interested despite himself. He knows what people say of Primula's odd cousin: _he's a little bit queer, Bilbo Baggins. Upped and skipped town one day, nary a word, thought he'd bellied-up for sure; then poof! years later, drops right back in, dressed in the most peculiar way, ghostly look to him, like marching home from war, shield on his back, can you believe it; he was never quite the same hobbit. Clammed up in that house, talking to himself, awfully sullen; and always with those dreadful, deathly eyes, look right through you. Won't have friends for tea, won't come to anyone's party, and you know, we invited him, out of the goodness of our hearts; we were worried about him, you know; gone a touch mad, I think; sad thing._ He heard the unkindnesses: _well, what did he think, I ask, running off into nowhere after a sorry bunch of brigands – and outsiders, besides. He was never a proper gentlehobbit before – and pardon my candor, but his mother, rest her soul, was worse. Should have all gone to Lobelia from the start of it, I say._ Even days ago, in the first great wavecrest of loss, in the aftershock of it, when Brandy Hall was suddenly full of fretful-faced strangers and some other mother's acorn pies, Frodo would hear them, worrying, wondering what ought to be done with the poor dear boy. He lay dead-eyed across his parents' bed and listened to his neighbors chatter in the den deep into the night. _Oh, no –_ _we can't let him leave off to Bilbo. Poor Bilbo can barely look after himself, let alone a growing lad._ Or: _what about Saradoc and Esmeralda? They've got a fauntling that age. Only one, besides._ Or: _yes, I know it's a bit strange, and yes, he's a little bit queer, but Bilbo is his family, he is, and shouldn't a boy be with his family? Maybe it'll be good for him. Maybe it's meant to be._

Frodo does not put much stock in any of this. He knows his Uncle Bilbo from the times Mother would take him over for breakfast – from the sweet breads he'd bake; from the way he would scoop Frodo up and bounce him mindlessly on one knee; from the nonsensical bits-and-pieces he'd tell Mother; and from the way Mother would smile, gently, like you do to a tale-telling child, and touch his wrist, saying _oh cousin_ in a soft way that seemed slightly sad.

And he knows his uncle is a little bit unusual and a little bit mad, but all the same, Frodo cannot be Primula. He hears these oddball beginnings of story, and under the heaviness of mourning, lets it work his mouth into a tiny, doubtful, smile. "Princes," the lad chuffs. "You're claiming to have met princes."

"Oh, aye – that I did. Nobody knows this, Frodo, my boy, but your uncle was once, in fact, a very important hobbit. There was a time I thought I might never make it back to this little hole again."

"Uncle," Frodo says, gentle, a crust of weeping still in his eyes, trying to sound like Mother, but unable to remove the cheekiness of his grin. "You did _not_ know princes."

Bilbo does not miss a beat. "I beg your pardon!" he harrumphs, feigning indignation, "But I did, indeed. Prince Fíli –" The writer points. "—why, he plopped right down in that armchair, there, jaunty and brazen as you please. Ate the cranberry biscuits right out of my pantry. Did not even say please. And Prince Kíli spilled blackberry wine all over the sofa on which you have propped your handsome little heels. Turn the cushions! You'll find the stain. Hmph. Heirs of the East! But they were here, my dear, if you can believe it. And through that very door – right there – whether you believe it or not – once passed a Dwarven King."

Frodo cannot believe it. But he feels a flicker in himself – a tickle of childhood, some fairly magic – that lets him be a little bit enchanted, and forget, for a while, a little bit of his grief.

"Tell me the story," he says.

Bilbo swallows his tea and clears his throat. "Well – all right, lad – I am happy to – because you asked."

"Once again," the writer says.

The story goes: _once upon a time_.

* * *

He does not see the way it ends.

You do not, either, princes, and perhaps there are some things none of you may know, but after the clutch of his cruelty and the silence of collapse, your mother-brother hopes you do know this: it would have been yours again. He would have given all and taken none to make it up to you. You, with your giggling voices and your lazy song, were the kings that he could not be, and you are Sons of Durin – as deathless and as true.

 _No_ , he would say. _No, you are not, you will not, you cannot._ But this is not the truth. The truth is yes – that you were always beautiful. You were always Mountain-Made.

 _Remember_ , asks the king from the burglar, with the blood thick and frightening in his throat and the bleak gray darkness bestrewn with small brave lights.

He would have let you keep her, Thorin will think, breathing softly there at the end. He is not the same as he was then, in Blue Hills with Dís and the hog-farmer. A part of him has gone tender and green like new growth. He sees this more clearly after the white of dragon sickness has gone from his eyes. For you, Kíli, small son of his sister, whom he had held in his arms and sang to sleep, the King would have allowed it. He would have allowed you your title, your elf whore, your dirty, wild hair.

For Fíli, the son-who-is-not-but-is-his-son, the king who would walk after him, the child to whom he would promise every piece of the world, he would have allowed it – your fool laughing-games and your golden pride.

There will come a day, princes, when you yell your heart at him at the foot of his fathers' statues. And after this fool courage, you could have asked anything of him, truly. You each could have asked of Thorin a half of his riches and he would have given one half, each, to you.

" _PUT THIS IN YOUR BOOK, BOGGINS,"_ Kíli screams, sprinting through the tall grass before Mirkwood, Fíli at his heels, Fíli's trousers rippling over the young prince's head.

A part of him hoped you would never be kings, small ones. He hopes you will be princes running for a thousand years.

* * *

As he charges into the Battle of the Five, Thorin will think of his sister, running with teeth into dragonfire.

The Dwarves of Erebor have once lost all. They had lost themselves and they had lost their home, but Thorin of Thráin has not lost heart. It is burning gold and lowly shame and nights in the bitter-cold dirt, and he has not lost heart. It is dragon teeth and dragon's greed and dragon curse, and he has not lost heart. It is a thousand losses and then some, a fall and one-hundred falls again, and this Son of Durin has kept it in himself, that stout red organ, squirming, glimmering, believing, with all of him, that this is not the story's end. But on that mountaintop, he will lose heart. Thorin of Thráin will lose his heart. He will look horribly, wretchedly, to Bilbo, his most favorite of the rest, to the silvery choke of metal on his neck, under the tunic, and the sound from him is hope escaping from ventricles, cinder from the collapsed heart of a crowned Dwarf King. And he will wish it back – wish he had withheld it for another – and it is no lack of love for the hobbit – but in an instant that explodes into a hundred of your smiles, he wants it back, all of it. He would beg – he would ruin his voice on a wailing song – he would have torn his gift from Bilbo's body to have that flinch of steel instead on you. You will see in his face the arrow of anger, aimless; of regret, of dismay. And you will see, in that moment, with the ripping and blending of flesh into chain – at the blown candle of the king's breath – in the sundered break of bright, animal noise from Kíli, who now knows a grief none can ever surpass – how Thorin would have given anything. He would have given everything – every last, lowly quartz and every golden coin – to have not blessed away that proud white steel.

Thorin Oakenshield is a keeper and a singer of stories. As sorrowful and black as these songs are, of the Dwarrow and their beauteous, marching grief, he believes all stories worth telling must end in rightness. This is the way of great stories: justice will conquer, if it takes one year or a hundred thousand, if the tales that grow from these harrows will ever be remembered or told. That is the absolute power a storyteller knows. Prince Thorin, who sings of grief because it makes him know there must be light – whose voice is somber but whose hope is extreme, jubilant, fierce – who brings toymakers and carpenters and cobblers and little halflings to fight dragonfire and expects them to win, and when they win, Thorin, who is joyous but not surprised – he feels this truth, the surety, in his blood. His faith in fairy tales and their endings is terrifying, pure, supreme.

Somewhere in the stories and the songs that son-of-Thráin-son-of- Thrór keeps, he has forgotten, this king, that he is not immortal – and neither, young Durins, were you.

Stupid bravery. It is courage that kills.

Fíli of Dís of Thráin. Kíli of Dís of Thráin. He has heard it said that a mother knows in her blood if her children have died.

The King does not know if she is grinding sage in her kitchen or sharpening her knives when it comes that his sister stops and feels the life leave from hers. He does not know who will tell her – who will carry the cut braid tails, the clean ones and the wild, back to the hands that touched them first. He does not know. But so it is that upon the ice of the Lonely Mountain, Thorin looks in the Defiler's staring eye and into the husk of his own heart and knows beyond knowing you are both gone to him.

Life dies. Thorin Oakenshield knows this. He has seen at Erebor the melted husks of the she-Dwarrow, boiled to their jewelry as they tried to flee; the broken bodies of Dwarflings, babes trampled by statesmen running from their halls; infants dropped cold from dead stomachs. He has watched his own brother and grandfather die on orc iron. But this, Fathers and Mothers, is worse. It is the worse than losing a crown, worse than dragon piss on Dwarven tombs; it is beyond the pale. It is Dís, Daughter-of-Thráin, Last of Durin, lonely survivor of the line, who has lost everything twice. It is the death of two brothers, two sons, two fathers before you, two husbands, two homes. It is the worst thing Thorin can imagine, and so he has not imagined – not this, not in his life, not once before.

Thorin II has no children – for since the very first time you got to your feet and you followed him, princes, he has wanted for none.

And so, when Thorin thinks of his sister, it is always of her glory. It is not her grief.

The rest of them must remember her like this: Dís of Durin, daughter of Thrain, journeys home over cold rock to bury her sons and her king. She walks in white. This is how the Dwarves grieve, as diamond does, walking and unbroken, looking like she has seen war all her life, piercing and somber and clear-voiced and black-haired, so very much of Thorin that it threatens to reach into the burglar's throat and take the breath from him. She walks at a sure pace at the front of her train. She does not cry; she sounds like the hollow belly of a mountain, looks as if she has walked through ash.

"My Lady," Bilbo says when the gayal stop, bowing sloppily on the pale steps of Erebor; stricken; far from the first in a long line of people who have cleaved, weeping, to her in this auburn sunrise; having nothing to offer in solace but his word. "Your Majesty – I am so very, very – so very, very, very–"

She will stop to look upon him. She will have passed the others, silent, the color drained from her, but now, with the gold-capped horns of their mounts jingling softly in her wake, the jewelry missing from her throat, the Last Prince of Durin speaks: "You are the writer, then," she says.

Her voice is low and mighty and somnambulant. "Yes," the hobbit says, kneeling, knowing that he cannot look up. "Yes, your Grace."

Dís of the Lonely Mountain has walked very far. Her feet bleed quietly inside her boots. Her blink is slow like the tides of a white-shored sea. "My sons wrote to me of you."

Suddenly he feels most ill and small in his one Dwarf braid, this courtly cape, this silver-steel. His stomach is very sick and Bilbo thinks for a moment with that voice rolling in his ears he will have to leave.

In the end, it is Dwalin who wails. He emerges at the great hollow where once stood Dwarven doors, dressed in the finest clothes he owns, sees her, and, barely descending the thick stone stairs, crumbles. It is like the felling of a pillar. His body shivers with unpent sounds. He is to his knees, then to his arms, bowing over, sobbing, unabashedly, at her feet.

Bilbo does not stay for the entombment. After waiting so long, he finds he cannot. He does not stay to see if Dís, too, will collapse and mourn as hobbit mothers are thought to do, nor to see if Dwalin will ever stand himself up. He has already been waiting here long enough. Her face is unbearably familiar and there is somehow both too little and too much in it, all together, all at once.

The writer stands, and, one last time, proper like a gentleman, bows.

"It was a privilege," he swears.

It is a fairytale end. The Prince touches her hand to the top of his head. "Farewell, Master Burglar."

* * *

He will mail her the thing. It is a first manuscript – not quite finished – good work, if he is permitted to say so, but not quite done – and he does not know if she ever reads it. But, after a time, there is a package at Bag End. It arrives snugly-bound, a fine copper cylinder, and when opened, whispers a lush and woody smell his nose recognizes immediately: Dwarven velvet, insulated, black as onyx, feeling like wealth. He slips it out, and he unrolls it. There is no note.

There are faces – five of them – young, royal, and painted, standing posed, looking with one serious expression out at Bilbo as though to ask him who he thinks he is, and it is so predictable and so Durin, before he cries, he laughs. It is Thrór, the Old King, silver and resplendent. Thráin, fire-blooded and proud. Frerin, chub-cheeked and charming, and it is, of course, Thorin, glamorous and moody. All of them there, deathless sons of the Lonely Mountain, rich and haughty and scowling. But under it – he can tell – they look well, contented, happy.

And, in the center of them all, a child sitting prettily on a black obsidian throne, Dís. He sees them all around her and he sees the whites in her blue eyes, and, because Bilbo is a writer, able to see just a bit beyond what others might, he can see in them a candle's wink of her sons – when they are nothing but a possibility, a hopefulness, yet to come.

In Bilbo's book, there is a set of drawings. Ori made them by hand, one of each, preserving these real people for posterity, until it is the writer's own face on the very last page. The very first reads: _The Dwarves of Erebor_. It is Thorin's. And, though Bilbo does not hang the portrait sent to him by Dís – and, though it is the most damnable thing, he still cannot bring himself to throw much of anything away – he must think it over only a moment before, all at once, he rips the king's picture out.

 _There and Back Again_. The story here begins with Fíli and Kíli, standing in his door.

* * *

You were never to walk ahead of him.

What has he told you? You are to wait a step and follow. It is inappropriate for a prince to walk before his king, as it is for a sister-son to walk before his mother-brother. In all places you go with him, you are to go close – but not before – for it a sign of your respect, and an acknowledgement of the reality that this world is dangerous, young ones. One day, when you are the proud Dwarven lords you were always meant to be, and you enter the great halls of Erebor, you are still to walk behind, so that the king might show you how to be. When you are in this wide world, trekking to somewhere yet far away, you are to walk behind, so that – even if you are lost – you are not lost from him. And when you were children tumbling in the wooded thatches of Ered Luin, scaring birds from the snow and deer from the tall autumn grass, you were to walk behind him – so that any peril you might face, he will face it first, weaken it, shake the heart from it, and if even then you all together cannot fight it, you might steal your lives and run.

You were never to walk ahead of him, princes. Least of all in this.

" _Are we never to have any fun, then?"_

It is Fíli who first asked him, decades ago in the cobbled courtyard of Thorin's Blue Halls, where he had scolded you for making light of your lessons. He watched as his First Heir drove the blunted snout of his wooden sword into the earth. _"Uncle's here,"_ Kíli trumpeted, rolling to his feet, a bruised and happy tumbleweed with a dark frown soldered on his face. _"No fun! No smiling!"_

And Thorin knew that you were mocking him. He knew that in your youth, and in your freedom, it is your way to roll and laugh and joke and play, ignorant of the deep pain of the Dwarves, innocent to their long march, and though the king would yell and scowl at you, rumble about all you do not know, he would not change it. He would not tell you no, not so. He would not take your heart from you. For it is not that you must never smile, princes, but that you ought not do it lightly – it is that you must be honest – it is that Thorin thinks a king, and any one, should reserve this truth for the beats of his heart in which he means to smile most.

You, who have followed him for so very long – who have walked and run; who, not Mountain-Made, have made yourselves; who have gone through rain and ash and fire and cold. If this king were to lay his bones down on this rock and shiver and breathe and follow you for a while, for just a very a short while, then surely there is no wrong in that.

Says the King Under the Mountain with his last: remember.

Remember them.

* * *

The story goes:

_Once upon a time, there were two little princes who lived in a Lonely Mountain. They were Dwarves, these princes, as stout and as true as any people who have ever walked the yellows and greens of the earth. Oh, but these Dwarves were not the jolly, sing-song folk of the kindly south – no, certainly not – these Dwarves were the Dwarves of Erebor. A grander kingdom I believe the world may never see again, my lad; they were mighty and songful and dauntless, their royal family as lionhearted and clear as the diamonds they mined. But, like you and I, they weathered a terrible, sudden sadness. For their kingdom was taken from them, and all their hopes were turned to ash. Can you imagine how they must have cried? Wept!– these rich, rocky, warrior people – for a long, long time – for weeks and months and many years – until their eyes were red and their voices hoarse. For some things we lose, my dear boy, we can never get back, no matter how much we miss them, or how much we wish we could change something, somehow. And sometimes. Sometimes – when such a darkness comes upon us – it is very, very hard to remember that, eventually, and perhaps when we least expect it, the sun is bound to break. And these Dwarves of Erebor had lost much. They thought, perhaps, they had lost everything – all of their treasures, all of their memories – all the things to look upon that made them glad, and beautiful, and proud, and strong. And the Dwarf King did despair._

_But – since these two little princes were very bold, and clever, and daring – not unlike a certain young hobbit I know – they decided, one brisk and magic winter's night, that they would end their uncle's long sorrow, and set out upon a great adventure to take their kingdom back. The road to Erebor was very far, and cold, and dangerous. But all the same, the princes knew – for they were loyal, and good, and brave – that they must go there, to the home that was lost, to the Heart of the Mountain, and find it, fight for it, and make it home once more, until all their memories came back again._

_There_ , he said, _and back again._

Maybe you will never be Mountain-Made. But your uncle loves you, sister-sons.

You must have known

he does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Makammathûn, Neo-Khuzdul = he who (excessively) continues to sing.

**Author's Note:**

> Makammathûn, neo-Khuzdul = he who (excessively) continues to sing.


End file.
